Prologue

Evil grows inside evil, and the seeds of a lost sorcery are planted.

Prologue

            Wings beat all around, pushing bursts of warm air towards him. He breathed them in, burning his throat with each intake. Eyes watering, aching, he kept them open, mesmerized. The beasts were flying in his mind, he knew, and only there, in this dream, on this night. It was challenging to get an accurate count at first. Their featherings were all similar, their flying so fast and erratic, their paths so intertwined. This was the first night he had seen them for more than a passing glimpse. This was the first dream in which he could watch them, appreciate them. This was his first flight with the phoenixes. The flock numbered a dozen, but the awe they inspired and the fear they struck could annihilate an army.

            Fires rose and fell and swirled together beyond the birds. The walls of flame were so thick and so tall that no matter where he looked in any direction it was all he could see outside the phoenixes. A screeching squawk startled him from behind. He turned to take in the true size of the phoenix. It plodded onto the earth, its long, clawed feet kicking up dirt. It loomed over him by two or three feet, extending its neck occasionally to grow even taller. A fixed shadow fell on him, and it aided his eyes from the bright fires enough for him to inspect the phoenix in detail.

Tall and noble, it glared down at him. Its feathers were smooth and long. They were red, mostly, speckled with orange and yellow from the beak to the neck. The body was entirely red, but the tone darkened as the wings lengthened. At their tips, the feathers were so bloody red they were almost black. He caught a glimpse of the long tail swinging to and fro behind the beast. The same red-black feathers of the body blended into the base of the tail. Its tip, however, trailed into the same brilliant red of the head. More orange and yellow, even bits of white, spotted there. Its black beak was wide. It didn’t jut out far enough to be an effective weapon in and of itself. When it opened, however, the mouth beyond was large and dark. It was a hole, and little else. A flame sat where there should have been a tongue. It was small and unassuming. The phoenix screeched again, and the flame grew. It was beckoning the man standing before it to move forward.

And so he did, and the rest came slowly. He stepped to it as it dropped onto its belly, showing its respect and allowing his approach. He mounted it like he would a firesteed. It should have been awkward and uncomfortable, a man so small in comparison straddling the wide berth of a new beast. Yet it felt so natural that he almost fell into it, blended into the bird as it lifted its wings away from its body. The feathers were soft and light, and he was able to press his feet into the phoenix’s sides without upsetting it. Cautiously his fingers fell onto and spread across the bird. His eyes marveled and his skin tingled. Feathers and fingers intertwined. He gripped them tighter as the phoenix spread its wings to full span. They flapped a few times, kicking up a cloud of dirt high into the fire chamber. They rode on and through and with the air. He searched all around again, and the phoenixes looked much the same as they had from the ground, except now he felt a part of their flock. He was not threatened, nor lost, nor confused. The hot air from the fire offered no resistance as winged beast and riding man flew through it. If anything the heat empowered them.

Up and up they went. The phoenix paid no mind to the man on its back, though he knew it wouldn’t yet heed his commands even if he knew how to give them. From the ground the fires seemed to have no end. Yet as they rose with the flames encircling them, he finally spotted something else. A stone ceiling loomed ahead. For a moment he contemplated letting go, knowing that he’d wake before he hit the ground. Just before he did the phoenix let out another screech, an ear-splitting one that would send the living to their graves or wake the dead from theirs. Fire spewed from its mouth. It burst forth, hundreds of feet in length, one endless and massive ball of fire at the end of a whip of flame, and the impact and the heat broke the stone ceiling. The phoenix continued upward, weaving between blazing chunks of stone. What remained of the ceiling was still on fire as they rose. It was a cloud of flame, burning out until it became a wreath, and he closed his eyes as tight as he clenched his fists, squeezing his grip on the phoenix and hoping to stay asleep.

For a few moments, all he saw was red.

He found himself standing on a plateau once he regained his coherence. It was much longer than it was wide, a sliver of earth all alone in a black abyss. He looked ahead to see a wall of thick gray brick spread from one end of the plateau to the other. He approached it slowly and put a hand to the cool and coarse wall. It was tall, intimidating, insurmountable. He looked up and couldn’t see the top. The sky beyond was as red as his phoenix’s feather, and its hue changed so subtly that he had to watch it for some time to convince himself that it was indeed changing. And then he came back to reality, or at least the reality of this world inside his head, and he looked down at the wall once more. He looked the opposite way this time, at the minutiae rather than the massive. A sprawling red sky hung above him and an enigmatic black chasm swam around him. He let his eyes see smaller. He leaned in towards the wall, and in its cracks laid a red substance. It felt soft at first, but truly abrasive and gritty when he rubbed it between two fingers. He wiped it off on his robes, thoroughly enough that its remains were all but gone.

He turned away from the wall, and a fire stood a dozen feet away, alone on the surface. It must have been right behind him when he arrived, but he was drawn to the wall first. He approached the flames and realized how small this fire was compared to everything else, how ineffective it was in this vast and unknown world. It was a weak campfire left by a weary traveler at best. Still he stood over it. Fire was as beautiful and enthralling in his dreams as it was in his waking hours. It would never leave him, neither in his head nor his reality. It was drawing him in, comforting him, and he realized he was falling even deeper into a sleep that he thought had already swallowed him whole.

The plateau suddenly shook. The far end of the cliff broke off and fell into darkness. More and more it quaked, intensifying with each passing second. Chunk after chunk removed itself, and the surface grew smaller and smaller. He turned his neck. The wall was still there, looming, mocking. He turned back around to look down at the fire, looking smaller still. A small glass vial, wedged in a crack in the ground, stood on the other side. It looked like a bloodied finger as it held the same bright red substance pressed into the cracks of the wall. He walked around the fire and grabbed the vial. He sniffed it unthinkingly, and it had as little odor as he was expecting. A thought crossed his mind, and then left just as fast as it had come.

Then the ground shook again, and he almost lost his balance and the vial. He turned, and there was little more than a phoenix’s wingspan left between his feet and the abyss. There was little to fear, in truth, except perhaps the sleepless night that would follow. He wasn’t ready to wake, however, and so he let his fleeting thought enter his mind again. His arm rose, and he held his hand over the fire for a few seconds. He turned it, and slowly the powder poured from the vial in a steady stream like a waterfall of blood-dried sand. The reaction began before the vial was even empty. Fire crackled and grew under his hand, the flames tickling his skin. He heard the same noise up ahead, and when he let his eyes rise, the fractures in the wall were aflame. It was only for a second though, and then the wall burst. From each crack it burst, into hundreds and hundreds of pieces. The rubble rose and fell, some of it back onto the plateau, but most of it into the darkness. The ground shook again. He turned, and the end of the plateau was at his heels. The vial fell into the fire as he leapt over the flames. He ran and ran, his legs aching, and when he turned back for a glance the fire was naught but a flame like a phoenix tongue. Darkness lay before him. He didn’t close his eyes, but they might as well have been, and he begged not to wake.

            And then, for a few moments, all he saw was red.

            He was in his chamber next, except that the edges of it were blurry, details that mattered not. The stone floor under his bottom was warm, as if he had been sitting there for hours. His door was right behind him, and he pondered over his awkward positioning. It was a relaxing turn from the beginning stages of his dream. He settled into his body, and as more time passed the blurriness around him faded, at least ahead of him where he laid his focus. Across the chamber sat a figure shrouded in shadows. It didn’t move. It was much like him, however, in shape and size and purpose. That he could sense. He knew so when the figure conjured a fire right in front of itself. The fire was large, but controlled, the flames’ tips dancing where the figure’s face would be. Even with the light of the fire the figure still sat in darkness. It leaned forward, but only gave away red eyes with faded yellow pupils. This much he knew. This much he had come to expect.

            “You’ve returned,” it said slowly in a grizzly voice.

            “Yes,” he nodded.

            “On this night, I’ve been waiting. Where did it take you?”

            “Where did what take me?”

            “Where?” the voice asked with an impatient tone.

            “To a ring of fires whose flames rose higher than my eyes could see. Phoenixes flew within it, and the greatest among them took me on its back, and its wings took me up and up, and the fire blasting from its mouth burst through a stone ceiling.”

            “Yes,” the eyes moved up and down and blinked. “And then the plateau.”

            “A wall and edges that fell into nothing, that’s all I saw at first.”

            “And then the tiniest of things saved you.”

            “What was it?”

            “You will learn.”

            “Teach me.”

            “It will take you where you need to go next.”

            “What will?”

            “Destiny.”

            “How?” he begged for more.

            The eyes slowly closed. He looked down to watch a fire grow from the floor. It matched that which shone across the room. When he looked up again its eyes were once again open, unblinking. “Make me tell you.”

            He was at a loss for words. This was territory he needed to tread lightly.

            “Please, help me find how to take the next step.”

            “Not with words,” the figure said calculatedly. “The fire before you is yours. All fire comes from the same place. This is known throughout the world, for even where it has died it can be born again. If you believe that, truly as all great men and mages should, then the fire before me is yours as well. It warms me and guides me and comforts me all the same. Tell me. Tell me not with words.”

            Throughout his life he had searched for identity and meaning. Only in his dreams had he ever found the time to look, and only in his dreams did he feel he had a chance of finding them. He had never been so close, not in all the years he had dreamt glimpses of such incoherence and inconsistency that he could hardly remember them upon waking. Now, after everything he had gone through in this slumber, with as real as it felt, he knew that he had to see some sort of ending. He didn’t beg, but he persuaded, and he did so with his thoughts. He couldn’t see the figure across the room. He didn’t want to. All he needed was the feel of the fire and the light that shifted on the back of his eyelids. He could sense the figure then. He felt close to it, but he knew it hadn’t moved closer. It could have been sitting amongst the phoenixes in the fire chamber or kneeling amongst the rubble on the broken plateau. It didn’t matter, as long as its fire was still blazing. He continued to persuade, and it slowly evolved into influencing, intimidating, coercing. On and on he went, feeling stronger as he felt the figure growing more and more comfortable, relying more and more on the fire that he had claimed as his own. He opened his eyes.

            The fire before him was red, and it was all he saw for a moment.

            He felt more awake than he ever had. His dream took him to another chamber, one ringed with geysers of endless fire. A scorched and cracked plateau lay beneath his feet and an endless abyss of magma all around. He didn’t have to take a single step, only reach out his hand. The tome was thick, bound in black leather that had been etched into with an ancient and forgotten script. It sat upon a pedestal of fractured red stone that was an extension of the ground on which he stood. He let his hands wrap around it, and it was so hot to the touch he was stunned the leather hadn’t melted. The heat was exhilarating. Against his chest he pressed it, and the beating of his heart was so intense he could feel it coursing through the pages. In that instant he felt complete. Fire surrounded him above and below and all around, and his heart beat with new purpose, and his hands felt full for once and his mind set on its path for the first time.

            “Will you not wake?” a dark figure whispered as it nudged him.

            In the new yet unsettlingly familiar darkness, he was frightened at first. He was in his chamber, awake, back in the living world, and an arm in the darkness had jolted him back to it. His eyes adjusted, and the cloudiness behind them faded. He was able to make out a face. It was square and stern, thin but strong, with wormy lips that had dagger-sharp points on either end. Youth still lingered on it, and he saw his past for a moment.

            “Father,” the man said. “It is done.”

            “When?” the Greatmage asked breathlessly, sitting up a bit.

            “Within the hour,” he told him. “I came to you immediately. You were fast asleep.”

            He patted the edge of his bed. “Sit with me, my son.”

            The younger man did. “I wasn’t sure if I should wake you.”

            The Greatmage smirked. “I’m most glad you did. I know what we must do next.”

            All he gave him was a curious look, eager and unsure all at once. “North. We must go north.”

            “There is nothing north. Only Deadflame, and he cannot be scaled or penetrated.”

            “Fire never dies,” he whispered. “If it is to be one of consequence, our future lies there. Destiny points us north.”

            His son nodded, confirming that he understood his father’s next request. He turned and disappeared into the surrounding darkness, closing the chamber door behind him. It wasn’t wise for either of them to be awake and talking and planning at such an hour. Sinking back into his bed, the Greatmage closed his eyes once more, yearning for the day his dreams and his reality would burn together.

Reviews

[Jamal]

arutha and alex93 basically said everything I was thinking. though I must say this was a pretty sick prologue

[Alex93]

Well since Arutha already gave you a detailed review there's really nothing left for me to point out. But I will say that you have hand for detail which is great but too much off it can be overwhelming. Also, the first few sentences have way too many commas where they don't need to be.

[Arutha]

This is truly intriguing. I love mystical creatures, and to concenter your prologue about one is just awesome. I also love the mystery of the dream state. It feels dark and hazy, yet crystal clear at the same time, at once quite confounding to describe. ;-P I also love the way it ends, just really bringing my curiosity to a head with the father and son duo.

So, here I've just gone through and called out a few things that jumped out at me as I was reading:

"The flock numbered a dozen, but the awe they inspired and the fear they struck could annihilate an army." I get what you're going for here, but "annihilate" feels extreme to me. Maybe something a little more subdued like "leave an army trembling to a man" or something. Unless you're implying that they have some sort of fear magic that actually wreaks emotional havoc on a man's ability to think straight, in which case maybe throw that in there.

" Fires rose and fell and swirled together beyond the birds." I would suggest getting rid of that second "and," like "... rose and fell, swirling..." Otherwise it feels kind of monotone. This is the same in a few places where you list things out with either several commas or conjunctions. For the most part, though, the flow of the piece is quite nice.

"...it aided his eyes from the bright fires enough for him to inspect the phoenix in detail." I'm not sure that was grammatically correct. Maybe, "... and it aided his eyes, returning the night vision claimed by the light of the fires." or something.

"When it opened, however, the mouth beyond..." I know this probably feels nit-picky, but I'd recommend considering "within" instead of "beyond." I can't really explain why, though, lol.

I freaking LOVE the description of the Phoenix. Detailed descriptions are probably one of the most fun things to write, but they're also one of the most fun things to read when an author is good at it, which you obviously are!

"...kicking up a cloud of dirt high into the fire chamber." I'm not sure what the "chamber" is. I don't really have an image of this, and I couldn't find it anywhere in the preceding paragraphs. There was mention of several fires, but that was all I could find.

"They rode on and through and with the air." Another example of the and/comma list-y thing.

I love the description of the flame, as well. Also, the description of the plateau is just what I was waiting for, a solid, visual setting to picture the MC in.

"He looked the opposite way this time, at the minutiae rather than the massive." I get it, and I even think it sounds pretty cool, but it felt a bit too obscure. In my opinion (and I think this goes back to your point about my over-abundance of characters, lol) the reader should be able to just truck on through without having to stop and try to understand what the author meant.

"He wiped it off on his robes, thoroughly enough that its remains were all but gone." I would remove everything after the comma.

"It would never leave him..." Again, this felt a bit obscure to me. I find myself semi-obsessing over it, trying to figure out what you meant by it. Don't get me wrong, mystique is crucial to any good prologue, but this just felt a little left field (though that's very much a personal opinion ;-P). >> Now I'm at the end, and I see that it has some implications for the continuance of the plot, so now I'm just on the fence, lol.

"It was square and stern, thin but strong..." I would either nix square or thin, those tend to present rather polarized visuals, I think.

Thanks for entertaining me!

[Andrew Frame]

Thanks for the great detail! I noticed in editing the entirety of this book that those dreaded commas are one of my problems. I try to vary my sentence structure as much as possible, but clearly go overboard sometimes. Hope you keep reading if you get the chance!