Soleil Asclepius
Cherry was fighting a dwarf.
No—not a dwarf. He was something far more dangerous than your average dwarf. A white core lesser, a being whose very presence in this world should have been impossible, should have been a contradiction in terms.
And yet there he was, matching my Cherry blow for blow, meeting the fury of a Phoenix Wyrm with the cold, implacable power of earth and fire.
He could kill him. This realization struck me with the force of a lightning. This lesser, this dwarf, could actually kill my sweet Cherry.
The long-dead systems of the Sun Theatre pulsed with desperate urgency, their Manatech screens flickering with images I could not look away from.
There was that dwarven boy. Always that dwarven boy. He was the center of this chaos, the eye of this storm, and the aether—the corrupted, grieving aether of Dicathen—would not stop showing him to me.
I had no time to think. No time to plan. No time to do what I did best: nothing.
The habit of centuries, the paralysis of survival, the endless, corrosive practice of hiding—all of it had to be set aside. If my flock drew the attention of Epheotus, if the Indrath Clan sensed this disturbance and came to investigate, they would find me.
And if they found me, they would eventually find the Hearth. They would find the few remaining Phoenixes who still sheltered there, in that hidden sanctuary I had abandoned and still, still loved with every ember of my broken heart.
I could not let that happen.
I rose from my roost.
The moment I stepped through the doorway, the full scope of the Reset's work crashed over me like a wave.
The inner sanctum of the Sun Theatre—my refuge, my prison and my tomb for centuries—was transforming. What had been buried beneath Indrath-forged mountain was now fully exposed to sunlight for the first time since the genocide.
The air, that open air of Dicathen that I had not breathed in so long, rushed into my lungs with a sweetness that was almost painful.
Before me, the Sun Theatre was healing.
Its broken pieces stirred from millennia of slumber, lifting from the earth, drifting through the air, seeking their original positions with the inexorable purpose of migrating birds.
The mountains that the Indrath Clan had erected to bury this place—those geological lies, those monuments to genocide—were being molded like clay under the effects of Djinn Manatech.
Stone flowed like water. Rock reshaped itself like living tissue. It was like watching the Titans of Epheotus at work, those master craftsmen who could erect buildings that defied logic in mere hours. But this was not creation. This was resurrection.
I put one foot in front of another, forcing my body to move, forcing my mind to focus. My body. Even that word felt strange.
I was so used to this form, this Narmanakaya—the Emanation Physique, the humanoid shape that was so similar to lessers—that I sometimes forgot it was not my true self.
But for what I needed to do now, it was wrong. Too large. Too visible. Too identifiable.
I clenched my fist, my nails digging into my palms until I felt the faint, sharp pain of breaking skin. Then I shook my head, and with a burst of orange light, I shifted.
The Sambhogakaya. The Limitless Physique.
This was the body of change, the form we Asuras could mold and shape as easily as a lesser might change clothes. For my kin, for the Phoenixes of the Asclepius Clan, it often manifested as something small—a songbird, a finch, a swallow, a pigeon, a potoo.
Something that could go unnoticed, unremarked, unhunted. My Sambhogakaya took the shape of a robin with a breast the color of dying embers, golden eyes that held more age than the mountains below, and feathers the ashen grey of wood that had survived a fire.
I spread my wings—small and frail to any eye that might see, a creature of no consequence, of no interest—and I flew.
The advantage of this form was its insignificance. My mana signature, that blazing sun of Asuran power, could be compressed, hidden, reduced to the faint warmth of a bird's life force. No Dragon would sense me here. No Indrath hunter would mark my passage. I was prey, small and skittish and utterly beneath notice.
The thought should have revolted me. I was Asclepius. I was Phoenix. I was of the greatest Clan to ever grace Epheotus, a lineage that stretched back to the dawn of Asuran society as everyone knew it. To hide, to skulk, to make myself small—
But it did not revolt me. I had learned, in the centuries since Taegrin Caelum, that survival was its own kind of pride.
The proud—those of us who followed Lord Mordain to avenge Lady Dawn—were all dead now. Only the hidden endured.
I flapped my wings and hovered above the Sun Theatre, the light of Mordain—the sun, that eternal witness—bathing the scene below in gold and shadow.
So much fire. So much destruction. So much pain.
The images came unbidden, as they always did when I saw flames of this scale.
The Faircities of the Djinn, burning. The Indrath dragons in their Dharmakaya—their Real Physiques—raining cascades of pure mana from the skies, annihilating everything and everyone their light touched.
My own heart, beating frantically as I tried to guide refugees to safety, to pull as many Djinn from the inferno as my strength would allow. The looks in their eyes—those gentle, brilliant, dying eyes—as the apocalypse of their race unfolded before them.
Zhoroa of the Pillars. The capital of the Legal Body of Sandard.
One of the greatest cities ever built, be them lessers or not, a masterpiece of Djinn architecture and culture that Lord Mordain had insisted every member of our Clan visit at least once.
"To see what truest peace can build," he always said, "is to understand why we fight to protect it."
I watched it burn. I watched it die. Raped by the Indrath Clan, violated by dragonfire, reduced to ash and memory while its people screamed and fled and fell.
We had fled with the survivors, guiding them toward the large, imposing forest that would one day be called the Elshire. We had hidden them near what would become the border of the Beast Glades, building the Hearth. We had tried.
And in the end, it had not been enough.
I wrenched myself from the memories before they could fully claim me. Below, my Phoenix Wyrms screeched in unison, their voices merging into a single, world-ending cry as they dove toward a single point—the large stage of the Sun Theatre, now fully restored, now kissed once more by Mordain's light.
Oh no.
I flew closer, my small heart hammering in my tiny breast. What has gotten into you? Why is the aether making you behave like this?!
My poor chicks. My beautiful, gentle chicks. They were not evil—they could never be evil. It was the aether, that corrupted, polluted aether that had been stained by the genocide of the Djinn.
It seeped into everything in Dicathen, twisting and maddening, awakening the draconic nature that lurked in them. My Phoenix Wyrms, for all their majesty, were still creatures of that corrupted world. They could not help what the aether made them.
Below, the white-core dwarf fought Cherry, my firstborn, my dearest. He was good—the dwarf, I meant.
Masterful. Controlled. He contained Cherry's wild fury with a precision that spoke of centuries of combat, of a lifetime spent learning the language of battle until it became as natural as breathing. Cherry, for all his age and power, was being matched.
The other Phoenix Wyrms of my flock—weaker than Cherry, for Cherry bore the Beast Will of their entire lineage—had broken away from the main fight. They were diving toward... toward him.
The dwarven boy.
He was running. Panic was written in every line of his small body as he fled from my flock, from the other lesser mana beasts that had been unleashed by the Reset, from the chaos that had swallowed everything. A group of human adventurers fought alongside him, their movements desperate and determined.
And as I looked at him—really looked, with the senses that went beyond sight—I understood something that shook a buried part of my instinct as a Phoenix.
"By the Samsara..."
The words escaped me as a chirp, lost to the wind, meaningless to any who might hear. But their weight was immense.
He is a reincarnate.
We Phoenixes could sense them. It was a gift of our lineage, a blessing of our bloodline. Reincarnates had a scent, a feel, a presence, call it however you will, that resonated with something deep in our souls.
This dwarven boy—this small, terrified, impossibly young child—radiated that resonance. My senses rang with it, clear and unequivocal as a bell.
But reincarnation was rare. In all the ageless history of the Asclepius Clan, we had heard of only Asuras achieving it. The strongest of souls, the most resilient of spirits, could sometimes cling to existence beyond death and find new life.
Even for us Phoenixes—masters of life and rebirth, we who understood the cycle of death and renewal better than any other race—reincarnation was a difficult, dangerous and, more than all, uncertain path.
For a lesser to reincarnate? It should have been impossible. And yet here he was. Here he was, running for his life beneath the claws of my own children.
Who are, who were, you? The question burned in my mind. Who were you, in your previous life, to achieve what even Djinn could not?
Instinct overrode fear. The sacred duty of the Asclepius Clan, written into our very essence since before the first of our Clan hatched from the first flame, was to shepherd and nurture all reincarnates. They were rare. They were precious. They were ours to protect.
I released my King's Force.
It was not a spell, not a technique, not something I consciously controlled. It was simply presence—the weight of an Asuran will, the authority of a being who had existed since before these lessers' ancestors learned to walk upright. It rolled across my flock like a wave, and in it was a single, absolute command:
Retreat. Now.
The effect was immediate.
My Phoenix Wyrms stopped. Their descent halted, their wings spreading to catch the air as confusion replaced fury. Even Cherry—my Cherry, locked in combat with a dwarf who could actually harm him—turned his massive head, his beautiful magma eyes seeking the source of that impossible command.
He found me.
No!
The word was a scream in my mind, a prayer, a plea.
No, no, no, no—
The dwarf, true to the instincts of a warrior who had survived dozens of battles by never letting an opportunity pass, did not hesitate. He saw Cherry's distraction, that single heartbeat of inattention, and he seized it.
A halberd of fire materialized in his hands—pure conjured flame, shaped by will and power into a weapon that could kill him. His grip, encased in the gauntlets of that terrible stone armor, tightened. And in one motion, one perfect, economical, lethal motion, he swung.
Cherry's head left his body in a single, clean arc.
The sound it made—the sound—was not what I expected. It was not loud. It was not dramatic. It was a wet, final thump as the massive form collapsed, and then a silence that seemed to swallow everything.
What have I done.
The thought was distant, muffled, as if coming from very far away.
What have I done?
My flock screamed. The sound was agony given voice, the grief of children who had just watched their father fall. Whatever trance the corrupted aether had placed on them shattered in that instant, and they fled—wings beating desperately, bodies terrified, leaving behind a cloud of blinding dust that obscured everything.
What have I done?
I waited for the grief to hit me. I waited for the tears, the sobs, the collapse I knew should come. Cherry was dead. My Cherry. My firstborn. The chick I had held against my chest for months, willing it to live.
The Phoenix Wyrm who had grown from a hatchling no larger than my forearm into the magnificent creature who had just fed the flames with his life.
I waited.
And I felt... nothing.
Not nothing—that was wrong. I was saddened. Of course I was saddened! Somewhere, in the depths of this ocean that my soul had become, there was a ripple that might once have been a tidal wave.
But I had grown desensitized.
Centuries of grief, of guilt, of loss piled upon loss until the weight of it all had compressed into something hard and cold and numb. I had learned to swim in this ocean. More water changed nothing.
Cherry's death was just another drop.
The dwarf—the white-core killer—retracted his magic. His armour faded, his halberd dissolved, and he began the solemn work of harvesting Cherry's core. In another context, in another life, that might have warmed my heart.
My people had always believed in honoring prey by using their remains to their fullest potential. The Beast Will of my tiny flock, the accumulated power and wisdom of every Phoenix Wyrm who had nested in the Sun Theatre since I first claimed it, would not be lost.
My eyes drifted back to the reincarnate. The little boy was injured—he must have fallen during his flight. He lay on the ancient stone of the Sun Theatre's stage, small and broken and so impossibly young.
The systems of this place had fallen silent at last, their work complete. The structure was whole again, restored to its original glory, a monument to a murdered people that now stood open to the sky.
And I...
I...
The Sun Theatre was no longer a place where I could hide. The Indrath Clan would notice this—could not help but notice. A buried Djinn structure, rising from the earth after millennia? They would investigate. They would find.
And I could not go back to the Hearth. Not after Taegrin Caelum. Not after watching Lord Mordain dragged into that fortress while I fled.
Not after surviving when so many better than me had fallen. I was too much of a coward to face the surviving Asclepius. Too ashamed. Too broken.
But there was still purpose in this world. There was still duty.
The ancient obligation of my Clan stirred in my chest, a warmth that even centuries of grief could not extinguish. The reincarnate needed guidance. Needed protection. Needed someone who understood what it meant to be reborn into a world that was not your own, to carry memories of a life that no longer existed, to be other in the most fundamental way possible.
I could not save the Djinn. I could not save Lord Mordain. I could not save Cherry.
But perhaps—just perhaps—I could save him.
I flapped my small wings and descended, my robin's body carrying me toward the stage where the boy lay injured. Above me, the sun—Mordain, that eternal witness—continued its indifferent arc across the sky. Below me, the lessers tended their wounded and counted their dead.
And Soleil of the Asclepius began her vigil.
It seemed there was still purpose for a Phoenix like me in this world after all.
A/N:
To help Arthur "understand" the mana arts of the Indrath Clan, Windsom simply refers to them as creation-type mana arts, furthermore Kordri too more or less tells Arthur that force-type mana isn't the correct term.
Likewise, the ability/system/reason explaining why Asuras possess three forms is not explored in canon.
To work with this, I drew inspiration from the Buddhist Trikaya doctrine, which states that Buddhas possess three kayas (bodies): Dharmakaya, Narmanakaya and Sambhogakaya.
In TBATE's context, these would correspond to the forms of the Asuras: a true form, a humanoid form, and a form representing "limitless potential," the miniature one.
That said, the concept may be more intricate than necessary. So let me know if I should keep it.