Chapter 10.5 Part 1
Inferno
The Story of the Phoenix
(A Bonus The King’s Remorse Story)
NOTES: This is NOT from Grey’s POV and this story takes place about a decade ago. This is the backstory discussed in the previous chapter —Chapter 10 ‘Poppy’— and, thus, is from Phoenix’s POV. Another note: This chapter is PART ONE! There will be Part Two in the next chapter. This story is about 13k words long and so I wanted to break it into two
You can skip this chapter and you will not be lost going forward; you got the important information in Chapter 10 ‘Poppy’. This is a bonus story for those who wish to see what happened that day from Phoenix’s perspective, not from only what he said in Chapter 10 ‘Poppy’
As you may be able to guess, there are:
TRIGGER WARNINGS: murder of both adults and an infant, neonaticide (not by the parents, but that’s the closest exact word that I could find for what happens), young children left behind by the murders committed and who witness the murders but not directly, the grief and pain and horror and anger and all the emotions that come with that, children lashing out in rage and grief, a child committing murder in retaliation
Everything that was discussed by Phoenix in the previous chapter —Chapter 10 ‘Poppy’— happens in this chapter, but instead of it being discussed as events that happened in the past, those things play out in the present and are from the perspective of ten-year-old Phoenix
Please do note the warnings, as these events are no longer spoken about in the past tense; they happen in the present and are shown right when they happen with the immediate reactions. Phoenix’s backstory deals with very heavy topics that affected him greatly— he is who he is in the current time, a decade after the events he shared in Chapter 10 ‘Poppy’ in large part because of what happened to him that day
Please take care to protect your wellbeing!
And if you ever find yourself struggling, please reach out for help— there are hotlines available, although the numbers and how to contact them depend on where you are. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health!
I wrote this short story as a Halloween short story two years ago— one of four short stories I wrote during the ‘spooky season.’ I knew Phoenix’s backstory since around the time I created his character about eight or nine years ago; since I knew in 2022 that I would be editing The King’s Remorse upon finishing Pockets of Gold and Silver, my previous work, I wrote out the short story. That version, written in 2022, was accurate to the original draft of The King’s Remorse. However, it’s not accurate to this current The King’s Remorse. With the story hitting the plot point where Phoenix finally decides to share, I decided to edit the short story. So, without further ado, here is the edited and updated short story of Inferno:
Phoenix bares his teeth in a snarl.
“Get back here! You coward!” he growls.
“Never!”
“That’s it. I’m gonna make you stop. I’m gonna get you!”
Phoenix accelerates to a sprint, paws thudding against the soil as a smile tugs at his mouth. He pricks his ears, tail high in the air as he races forward. He’s nearly there. So close he can taste it, and his flames sing on his pelt, responding to his excitement. Just one step more, and -.
His forelegs slam into a barrier and he pitches forward, head over tail. Dirt sprays in the air as he skids across the ground with a low oomph. He grumbles and scrunches up his face, letting the fire covering his black fur blaze hotter to burn off the dirt covering him.
“That was rude, Ky.” He spits leaves out of his mouth and glares at his brother from where he lays on the ground. He flicks his tongue against his teeth to loosen the dirt.
Ky gives a smug grin, shaking out his tan fur. His brown eyes glow with humor, and his fluffy tail flicks.
“You have your fire, and I have my illusions. It isn’t my fault you’re not the Wolf and aren’t immune to magic.”
Phoenix gives a pouty sulk and sends a thin line of fire toward Ky, who leaps out of the way. Their parents, Ivy and Onyx, had mentioned the so-called Wolf, the person who would take down the evil King. Phoenix thought the King was a made-up bad guy meant to scare him and Ky into going to bed. But he wasn’t scared of bad guys. He had his fire.
“Meanie! Don’t burn me!” Ky scampers out of range when the line of fire tickles Ky’s toes.
“You’re just scared. Nothing burns that I don’t want to burn, so if I burn you, I mean it.”
Ky looks up at Phoenix with big eyes. “You’d burn me?”
Phoenix flattens his expression and nods, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward when Ky’s face melts into something sad and pathetic.
Phoenix can only keep a straight face for a few moments before his expression cracks and he shakes his head, smiling. “Nah, I like you too much.”
“That’s what I thought!” Ky harrumphs stalks forward, chest puffed out and head high. His oversized ears droop slightly over his head.
Phoenix shakes off his excess energy from their interaction, then ducks down, forelimbs braced against the ground as he crouches in a play bow. “Think you can get me?”
Ky prances in a circle. He drops down to mirrors the pose, and the long fur on his chest and belly brushes the ground. “I think I can!”
He lunges, and Phoenix scampers out of the way, jumping up onto a low hanging branch of a nearby tree to escape his brother’s attack. He unsheathes his claws to climb. His weight on the joints of his toes aches, but he has to escape his brother. When Ky starts climbing the tree, Phoenix sets a ring of fire around the trunk, blocking his brother’s path upward. Ky retaliates with an illusion of rain.
Even though Phoenix knows the rain isn’t real, his flames still begin to sputter, despite his efforts to keep them going. His attempts at practicing and growing stronger have yet to truly pay off, like his father, Onyx, say they will. Yet, he reminds himself. Onyx couldn’t create his massive, intricate stone creations when he was a kitten Phoenix’s age, he said over and over.
Practice, he had stressed when Phoenix grew frustrated at how his magic wouldn’t respond during one of their training sessions. Work with your fire, not against it. The two of you are one. You are fire, and fire is you, just as I am stone and stone is me.
What is Ky? Phoenix had asked.
Ky is like your mother. Ivy is a part of everything you see around us.
Phoenix had walked in a circle, eyes wide as he took in everything around him, until he had tripped over his paws. Trees and flowers and vines and leaves surrounded him from all angles.
Ivy’s all of that?
Onyx had nodded. Yes, she is. She’s woven into the web of the plant life. She’s a part of the life. She isn’t plants, not like you and I are stone and fire. Ky’s like Ivy in that illusions have a life to them, but not in the way that Erebus made illusions for Aiyana to carry into this world. Ky creates his illusions and casts them upon a living being; they don’t exist without someone to act upon.
Ky’s really powerful. Ivy’s super strong.
Onyx had smiled, his slate eyes lightening like a mountainside warming beneath the morning sun. The stripes on his cheeks had shifted as he had dropped his head to make eye contact with his son.
Ivy is the strongest being I know. She’s amazing. Both you and Ky are beyond powerful, each in your own way, and more than either of you know. Your magic is powerful, Phoenix, but there’s more to strength than physical capability and what you can do with your magic.
“Cheater,” Phoenix grumbles at Ky’s illusion.
“It’s called using your resources,” Ky shoots back.
Phoenix opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, his dad appears from the trees.
“Ky! Phoenix! Come over here!” Onyx shouts, an excitement in his voice that has Phoenix leaping off the tree without looking at the ground beforehand.
The landing sends a force jolting up his bones, but he barely feels it.
Onyx towers over Ky and Phoenix, easily over three times their size, with short grey fur and ancient, dark slate eyes. Light fur lines his belly, right where Phoenix likes to curl up and sleep; the fur is long enough to be cozy but not so long that he overheats. Ivy’s fur is soft but she’s too fluffy and Phoenix doesn’t like it.
“Your mother just had her baby,” Onyx says, voice trembling as he smiles, fangs showing beyond his lips, just like Phoenix’s canines, except that Onyx’s are further back in his mouth. “You have a little sister!”
Phoenix gasps. His sister can play with him and Ky!
Ky leaps into the air. “Really?”
Their father nods. “You can come meet her.”
Ky turns back to Phoenix. “Come on, let’s go!”
“I will be back at the home. Your mom needs me. We’ll be waiting for you, so don’t be long!”
“Yeah,” Phoenix replies distantly.
A sister.
What a big responsibility. Ky and Phoenix will have to show her all their favorite games and make sure she learns all the rules right so they can play properly. They will have to show her the forest so they can run around all day and show her the best hunting spots.
But her magic!
Surely they’ll have to make new games to play when they learn what her magic is. The possibilities are endless. What will her magic be? What can they play? What games will they be able to make up? What ideas will she have?
Phoenix shivers with glee at the thought. Maybe she’ll think up games not even Phoenix and Ky thinking together could ever come up with!
“I will see you there. I need to help Ivy.” Onyx ducks off into the trees, slipping away on the path back home.
Phoenix knows he is using his stone magic to make his journey back home faster.
Their shared home of four —now five— feline individuals is a little den hidden away far off on the side of Ragdon Island, away from the main settlement of the Sea, a place where Ky and Phoenix had been told the majority of the others live and that it is very close to where King Garonda XIV’s castle sits
Neither Onyx nor Ivy told Phoenix much, but some bedtime stories featured the King as the villain and the Wolf and the Dove as the sibling heroes who would overthrow the tyrannical King. Phoenix had smiled and wiggled in excitement the first few times hearing the story, clambering up closer to his mother to hear more of the story. More about how the Wolf and the Dove had their own powers and could shift into their respective animal. Ky had gasped in awe at that, and Ivy had returned a smile to the both of them with such warmth and love that made Phoenix feel all fuzzy inside.
Phoenix knew the King was real, but bedtime stories always ended with the hero defeating the villain in a satisfying conclusion, if Phoenix didn’t fall asleep first.
Ky bounds ahead a few paces after Onyx is gone and the brothers have gotten over their combined shock at having a sister, then turns around. “Come on, Phoenix! Let’s go!”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Phoenix smiles. “Race you there! Last one back has to catch dinner for a week!”
He breaks off into a sprint.
“No fair! You started first!” Ky whines.
“You’re just saying that ‘cus you know I’m gonna win!” Phoenix shoots back.
“No way!”
“Yes, too!”
Phoenix grunts as Ky tackles him to the ground, swatting at him with his paws, claws sheathed. He sulks, eyes narrowed and nose wrinkled, then rolls over onto his back, kicking his hind legs into Ky’s stomach and throwing him off. But his brother just bounds forward again and wraps his paws around Phoenix’s shoulders, teeth wrapping around his ear.
Phoenix is just about to bat at the side of Ky’s face to get him to let go, when he sees a string of Guard and Soldiers marching through the forest. Members of the army of King Garonda XIV, the King of Ragdon. The Guard carry their usual bows in hand, arrows neatly tucked away in their quivers and leather armor strapped on tight. The Soldiers have their swords sheathed in their scabbards, and their metal armor rattles with every step as they plod through the forest.
What are they doing here?
One of the Guard holds a flaming torch, and the fire calls out to Phoenix, although he ignores it. Maybe they just want better lighting?
Phoenix pauses, foreleg halfway to reaching Ky’s face, and his brother’s grip on his ear loosens, and then lets go completely as Ky sits back on his haunches. The brothers watch as the Guard and Soldiers slowly make their way past, before they disappear out of sight. The Guard and Soldiers don’t spare them a glance, and Phoenix doesn’t think they had seen him or his brother.
“What are they doing here?” Ky asks.
Phoenix tilts his head to the side with a frown. He shrugs. “No idea.”
“That’s strange.”
“Very. Maybe they’re looking for the Wolf and the Dove?”
“Ooh, yeah! I think so! Maybe the Wolf and the Dove are out searching for ways to kill the King! Like those stories Onyx and Ivy told us.”
Phoenix stands up and shakes off the strange interaction with seeing the Guard and Soldiers. “Come on, let’s keep going. We need to meet our baby sister!”
The brothers take off again, racing through the forest. Trees pass by in a blur as they follow a trail they have run across a thousand times before.
They are just about to turn onto the final stretch of the path to their home when a boom rolls across the landscape. The ground shakes, and songbirds flutter up into the air with squawks of alarm. Phoenix skids to a halt, looking all around as his ears swivel to find the source of the sound. He draws in a wheezing breath as he shrinks in on himself.
“What was that?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Ky murmurs.
It starts off as just an itch, a little tickle in the back of Phoenix’s mind. But when he draws in a breath through his nose and that sharp scent makes contact with his brain, Phoenix jerks his head up with a gasp.
Smoke.
He can smell smoke, and it calls to him like those flames on the Guard’s torch had. It draws in his powers, and he knows which direction it’s coming from. He can see the faint clouds rising above the tree line.
“We need to get home now.”
There must be some measure of panic in his voice, because Ky runs just as quickly as he does. They each push the other a little faster, and then a little faster, then faster still.
They cover the distance in not even a quarter of the time it would’ve normally taken them, and Phoenix hardly sees his surroundings— he just follows the smoke and the growing haze spreading through the trees. Ky sneezes as the smog grows thicker in the air, but Phoenix doesn’t react. Fire has never bothered him. It can’t. They’re intertwined; each inextricable from the other.
“No…” Phoenix breathes as he slows to a halt in front of his home.
What was once a little house made by Onyx and Ivy tucked away within the forest has been consumed by fire, and the flames reach up well over halfway as high as the surrounding trees with smoke pouring out above the treetops. Phoenix’s ears draw back against the sides of his skull as he whimpers high in the back of his throat. He starts to shake. The tree their house had been built around is blazing in bright reds and oranges, and bits of the branches and dirt that had made up the walls of their home are blackened and charred.
Shock keeps Phoenix frozen in place, mind blank and flatlining, until Ky bumps into him when he backs up as the flames explode out a former window, sending sparks and debris flying and more smoke billowing out into the air. Phoenix’s brain finally makes the connections and realizes what he’s seeing.
“I-I…” Ky chokes out.
Phoenix watches the flames dance before his eyes.
He has never been afraid of fire.
Fire is his friend. It is his shadow. His constant companion.
Flames flicker across his pelt, caress his skin with a warm touch, and are his comfort. He is never without his fire. They are each other.
But as he gazes at the fire consuming his home, fear snakes around his heart, digging jagged talons into his chest and making his throat close up.
For the first time ever, he hates fire, and he sees anything but comfort in it. He wants to rip it from his skin, tear himself away from his fire.
How can it destroy his home? It’s supposed to be a friend, not burn something so familiar.
“Phoenix!” Ky cries.
“Our mother and father are in there,” Phoenix whimpers, eyes wide with horror. He tries to fold in on himself, curl up as tight as he can, and he backs up into Ky, who leans into him just as hard as he leans into Ky.
“And our sister,” Ky adds.
“No, no, no,” Phoenix gasps.
And once he can get his legs to start working again, he sprints toward his home, ignoring Ky’s screams for him to come back. Phoenix isn’t sure he can stop running if he tried. He just knows that his parents are inside his home, inside that fire, and so is his sister, and he has to save them. The fire is the bad guy, and he can defeat the bad guy, just like in those bedtime stories. He doesn’t want to leave Ky behind, because what if the fire spreads and it gets to Ky, too, but Ky’s strong— Onyx said so. Phoenix has to save his parents and his sister.
Phoenix rushes into the inferno, but instead of feeling comfort as the blaze engulfs him and the feeling of coming home, all he feels is pain. Pins and needles prickle at his flesh as the flames lick his skin. Heat sears his paw pads as he makes contact with the floor of his house and he’s forced to stop just as soon as he’s made it inside. Sparks and blinding reds and yellows and oranges batter all around him, and he soon loses where he is, despite having lived in the house for his whole life. He can’t see anything, not even his own nose or whiskers. Each breath is grating, smoke like sand against his throat and rubbing his insides raw. He squints against the howling wind, the tornado of the spiraling flames, and pins his ears to the sides of his skull as he tries to adjust and tell up from down, make sense of where he is.
Phoenix shouts for his parents, begs for them to reply, but his voice is lost to the fire.
He pricks his ears and swivels them around, straining for any sound.
But he can only hear the roar of the blaze, the crackling of the flames, the scream of the wind as it batters him from every angle.
He reaches out with his powers, feels the thrumming energy of the inferno as it merges with the energy within himself, and tries to take hold. He tries to channel his abilities, just like his father had taught him. The fire is me, just as I am the fire.
But the fire is too strong, too chaotic. He cannot get a grip on the flames, cannot latch on and begin to call to the blaze to make it respond to his will.
Phoenix plants his paws on the ground and levels himself. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, curling his lip as the heat of the fire bakes the flesh of his mouth, and then stares down the inferno as its flames dance all around him in a dizzying array of reds and oranges.
“Come on,” he hisses as he tries to latch onto the power of the fire, grip onto some small piece and begin casting out his control. But every attempt fails, bounces right off like water on the feathers of ducks he had seen out in the Singing Marshes. He’s harmless against the inferno, and he hates the feeling. And as desperation grows within him, he continues to try and he continues to fail.
“Come on!” Phoenix stares wide-eyed at the flames, lashing his tail. “I am you, and you are me. Onyx said so! Why won’t you listen? I have to save my family!”
Again and again and again and again he tries to take control of the blaze, and each attempt fails and the fire just continues to howl and shriek on every side of him.
Phoenix begs for his parents to come to him, begs for his newborn sister to somehow make her way toward him so he can bring her to safety.
“Please,” he whimpers. “I have to save you. They want to kill you. They’re trying to kill you and I don’t understand why.”
His legs give out, and he slowly crumples to the ground as the flames roar around him. He draws in a shaky breath that rakes against his irritated throat, and he coughs. Fire cannot truly harm him and neither can smoke, but a part of him wishes it could. Wishes it could do real damage so he didn’t have to feel the pain and the worry and the agony of the unknown. It hurts so much and Phoenix doesn’t know what to do with the pain. He wants his parents. They’d know what to do. They’d know how to help. They always do.
Phoenix sniffles. He looks around, but he can only see the fire.
He tries again. “Onyx! Ivy! Sister! I’m here! I can get you out!”
Phoenix gets to his paws and stumbles forward, moving through memory since the fire still blinds him to everything. He keeps his stance wide as he staggers and tries to keep his bearings.
When he reaches the part of the home where they all slept, a branch crashes the ground, sending up a cloud of sparks and ash in a flare of whites and yellows. Phoenix scrambles back a few paces and shakes his head to clear his vision from the blinding flash of the impact.
He bumps into a wall of stone, half built and mostly crumbled. It’s the work of his father— it’s too big and intentionally shaped to be natural. As Phoenix looks around, he can see the remains of his mother’s magic; charred vines spread across the floor and walls like blackened veins. The beginnings of a thick tree surround the area, curling around the stone, incomplete and hastily crafted, nothing like some of the intricate creations Phoenix has seen Ivy make.
They had been in here. His parents had been in this room.
Hope flares in Phoenix’s chest. He’s getting close.
If his mother’s vines are still here —if his mother’s vines and tree haven’t yet completely burned— then they must be nearby.
Phoenix clings to that bit of hope. He tries to scent the air but can only smell smoke and everything that’s burning, but he catches onto something else, something sharper. Something that makes his stomach twist, though he doesn’t know why. He just knows through some instinct that it’s wrong. A part of him wants to turn back around and leave fast, but he can’t. Not when he’s found a sign of his parents, and if he’s close to his parents, then he must also be close to his sister. If he’s close, he can save them. Ky’s waiting, and he has to keep going.
Phoenix takes a few steps forward and then trips over two lumps on the ground. For the second time that day, he falls down face-first. He jolts upright and shakes out his fur, whirling around and squinting into the flames. He slides his paws forward, trying to find what he had bumped into.
He doesn’t find it at first, but then he does. Phoenix feels something solid, yet burned from the flames. Crouching down, he nudges the shape with his nose, and his whiskers brush across it. Except, he feels fur. Long fur, singed and broken and stiff and patchy from the flames, bur fur all the same.
Ivy.
Phoenix scrambles back and trips over his paws and tail, falling onto his side and hitting his elbow on the ground. He wants to stay down, but he can’t leave what he knows but cannot admit to himself. He claws himself back forward, dragging himself on his stomach and closing the distance.
His heart sinks through his toes and his expression falls as tears well up in his eyes and stream down his cheeks but they evaporate as soon as they fall in the fire. Just as quickly, the hope plummets into horror and decays into despair.
“No,” he pleads, voice cracking and raising several octaves in pitch until it borders on a whine. “Please, no. No, no, no, please. Come on, please.”
“Please,” he begs, ears drawing to the sides as he gathers his legs beneath him, leaning back, and shakes his head. “No…”
His lips quiver, and his body begins to shake.
Up close, Phoenix can catch glimpses through the roaring flames of two blackened shapes and the faintest hint of a third, tucked away beneath limbs. One is the size of his father, one is the size of his mother, and the third is small enough to be his newborn sister.
None of them are moving.
Phoenix gasps, flattening himself to the ground as horror seizes his throat. He claws at his face as he struggles to get enough air into his lungs. He shudders from shock, and his vision blurs. He knows what he is seeing, but none of it makes sense. How can they all be here? Phoenix just saw Onyx. His father just told him that Ivy had given birth to a daughter. Ky and Phoenix were supposed to meet her.
Why did Lucius have to take them?
Why did the King have to kill them?
Why did the King have to send Guard and Soldiers to set their house on fire?
Why couldn’t Phoenix save his family?
The Guard and Soldiers and King are the bad guys, and the heroes are supposed to defeat the bad guys. Why couldn’t Phoenix defeat the bad guys this time?
“Onyx, Ivy,” Phoenix whimpers, voice shattering until he screams and cries and sobs. He falls apart.
He knows he has found the bodies of his parents and sister, but he doesn’t want to admit it.
“Sister,” he whines, shaking as he curls up beside his dead parents.
He reaches out with a paw toward their bodies without looking but doesn’t touch. He can’t. He can’t touch them. He’s afraid, terrified. Onyx and Ivy would know what to do, but they’re not here.
“Wake up,” Phoenix begs, tears streaming down his face, lost to the flames just like his voice is. “Please, wake up.”
Phoenix should go back outside and tell Ky, but how could he? What would he say?
How could he tell his brother that he was too late? That he had the opportunity to save his family but he couldn’t do so? That he was too weak to bend the fire to his will and make it stop? How could he tell his brother that he couldn’t save his family, when if he had been just a little faster and a little stronger they could both be meeting their sister right now? How could he tell Ky that he was just a little too late, that he was so close?
Phoenix chokes, then draws in a gasping breath.
He’s a coward and he knows it, but he can’t go face his brother. He wishes yet again that he wasn’t immune to fire. That he couldn’t just lay in here until the flames die down and then walk away unscathed. Maybe if his powers were over water he could’ve done something, but he knows that’s a lie. He had every ability to stop the fire, but now he’s too late.
His parents are dead, and so is his little sister.
It doesn’t matter that he’s a kid. He can control fire. He should’ve been able to save his family. And they would still be here if he wasn’t so weak.
Phoenix turns his attention toward the bodies of his parents. “Please,” he whimpers. “Please wake up. Please come back.”
They don’t move. Everything is silent despite the roar of the fire and the howl of the wind. Phoenix can’t hear any of it.
His parents don’t budge, and neither does his sister. The flames continue to eat at their bodies. Phoenix watches as his sister’s tail curls up as the fire burns her flesh, the only part of her he can see.
“No, stop it,” he sniffles, reaching out yet again to the blaze and trying to take hold of it. To force it to move away and leave his family alone. To stop destroying the last thing he has of them.
“Please, stop.”
But the inferno keeps burning, keeps battering every surface of his home, keeps roaring around him, keeps chipping away at everything he has known.
Phoenix curls up a little tighter on the floor of his home, right beside the parents of his sister. He wishes he could see Onyx and Ivy again and get just a little longer with them. He wishes he could meet his sister and know her name. He wishes he could get a little time as a whole family.
He stretches out a paw, squeezes his eyes shut, and imagines, with sobs wracking his sides, that it was any other afternoon and they were all taking a nap together, as one happy family. It was ok that he doesn’t know his sister because she was going to play with him and Ky later. She was going to tell him her name when she wakes up, because she’s going to wake up. She just needs more time. Lucius is going to give her back, because they can’t keep her. They can’t keep Phoenix’s family.
Can’t Lucius understand that Phoenix needs his family?
It’s not fair.
He needs his parents.
The world is so big for just him and Ky.
Phoenix shivers despite the overwhelming heat of the inferno.
He can pretend for just a little longer. He can pretend his parents and sister back into life, and then this will all just be a horrible memory. He can wish hard enough, and they’ll all be a family again.
But Phoenix knows he can’t, and he knows he and Ky are alone.
The fire slowly consumes more of the home he grew up in and the bodies of his parents and sister. Phoenix will have to leave soon; he doesn’t know when the house will collapse. He doesn’t want to. He wants to stay here forever. He wants to keep pretending. He wants to hide, stay here with his parents and sister. He doesn’t want to leave. He needs his parents. He doesn’t want to face the world without them. They’d know what to do, and he doesn’t.
“Please.”