Chapter Twenty Two: The Phoenix of Buttermilk

Arkanon walked the destroyed streets of Buttermilk. He had spent the entire night trying to rescue people from the rubble and ashen ruins. It was now early morning. Arkanon searched for his friend, Redran, but he could not find him anywhere in the small town.

He assumed that Redran was probably lost in the fire. Arkanon tried to remember the last time he saw his friend Red, and it was before the music started, in the main guard’s tent.

The tent was burned, but there were no corpses inside it. Arkanon had only survived the fire of the dragon because he was already dead. He was in the main street when the dragon covered it with fire. His clothes had melted, but his armour and bones were fine, a bit blackened and charred though.

He had spent several hours since then trying to save as many people as he could. The town of Buttermilk would never be the same. The dragon had destroyed the hope of the townspeople. Arkanon came across two horses, roaming free. Bentley stood in the town square, looking for Tenzen. Bronson, Jason’s brown horse, stood next to Bentley, not sure what to do.

Arkanon saw a small glint of fire in the coals. It was a bird. Ignacio woke up from a very warm nap and looked at his new father. The skeleton king looked down at the pretty phoenix.

“Hi, Pretty Bird.” said King Arkanon. The bird flew onto his shoulder and chirped.

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Arkanon got onto the back of Bronson and whistled for Bentley to follow. The four new friends wandered to the edge of town. Arkanon noticed that a time wizard had placed some of the injured in a time freeze spell until more healers arrived.

Arkanon walked to Redran’s manor. It was surprisingly untouched. The walls were still covered in green vines and the mansion did not get a single scrape. He hacked open the chains at the gate and wandered inside. The Skeleton walked into the house and saw that it was empty. There was a painting that caught his attention. It was Arkanon and Redran. This was a painting Redran had commissioned many years before. Arkanon looked at his own face and his features. His goatee, young eyes, awesome outfit.

He wished he was still alive. Technically he was still alive. But Arkanon felt pretty sad. He decided to drink his sorrows away, even though he couldn’t get drunk, and he started reading the tales of Redran on the couch next to a cold fireplace…

“Fuck this.” Arkanon said after one minute, and he stood up and opened the door and went outside, leaving the door open.

He shooed the horses and the bird inside and started lighting the fireplace. The horses were acting very strangely, unsure of what was really happening. Their hooves were very noisy on the wooden floorboards.

“Shut up, I’m going to read you a story.” Arkanon said to the animals. Bronson started to eat a sofa, which prompted Bentley to want to eat from that exact same spot of sofa too. So both horses fought over sofa fabric while Arkanon read aloud from the first chapter.

“Chapter One: A Boy Named Arkanon,” The skeleton king read. “Long ago, there was a land full of dangerous monsters…”