Vacant. The emptiness enrapturing Moyra following the death of Eos, sparked the creation of another, something far more dangerous than the silent ash domain. True chaos. As Eos melted away, Moyra itself finally began its decline into madness, and destruction. The barrier between the sacred lands and greater Moyra shattered within moments. Trees the size of mountains curled inward, as they died with their creator. The surreal creatures with strength equivalent to calamities fled in the warmth of their creator no longer being present. They had suffered long from hunger, and now, they knew they would die, so they fled, farther into the forest, flew higher into the skies, fell deeper into the watering hole, and screamed their whistles of loss in the face of their end. The intelligent watched as Moyra, the fireproof forest, burned to ashes, while the ashes vibrated with emotion it could not possess. The Plague of Moyra, the nameless, meaningless killer was an expressionless thing. It could not smile, it could not frown, and it could not scream from the pain that it lives in, and therefore, despite being a creature of too many tortured souls of too many conflicting emotions, each eye in the mighty midnight cried a single tear of the same black liquid it bled. They felt their hope leave, and in that depression, It rained for the first time in the forest. Shreifaya was in a haze. There was no up and down anymore. She could barely fly. The divine fire seemed more bleak than righteous in that moment.
'They were going to kill him, not wake him.' Killing a god. A vassal of God. How did they do it? Why did they do it? Was Lord Eos's slumber so deep that this was the only way to move forward? In the mind of the lung, nothing but questions could form, not even the sadness that should've formed in her hearts, but they were put to rest, when a familiar feeling washed over her. Smothering was not a harsh enough word. Suffocating meant that it was done because of ill intentions. This was not. Like a flower which was finally allowed to bloom in the middle of a summer day.
She was still in the middle of battle, yet she still let her eyes wander toward the great throne of Eos, where a beacon lit the moonless, night sky. Taller than the dome of ash, and greater in diameter than the floating island. You could hear a pin drop, or maybe she was so focused on what was in front of her, she simply couldn't hear anything. It was enthralling to look at. She couldn't even see the details of the pyre, and yet she knew that not a single flame dared to break apart from the main body. It was almost akin to a stem stripped of leaves, thorns, and the beautiful flower above. She couldn't feel warmth on her scales, but she intrinsically knew that her life would be forfeited if she attempted to draw near to him, yet that didn't stop her from considering the beacon, in the center of the sacred lands, and the forest as a whole, as hope.
'It's a beacon of hope. Lord Eos has returned.' The pillar vanished without a trace, yet there was still a figure. A large figure, though still significantly smaller than the pillar of fire.
Some would call this figure mindshattering, while some would call it so beautiful, so full of vigor and life that you wouldn't even notice how inconceivably large and existentially inconceivable it was. It had been so long, she had forgotten just how petrifying he was. At some point the fight between her and the plague had paused, just as all things did in the wake of something greater than them emerging, and blooming like a spring flower. She opened her eyes again, to a blurry world. Why is the world blurry? It doesn't matter, I suppose. Lord Eos has returned. That is enough.
'Its gone… the pain.' Somewhere far off from where he was, a piano played. It was kind to his ears. Opening his eyes behind the visor, the knight took in the soil beneath him, and the near mushiness of it. His limbs fought him as he tried to shovel a hand full of the mud into his fingers. There was a lingering ache that throbbed, for a moment, before fading with the dull noise he could hear in the background. There was a pleasantness to the sound, when he momentarily heard it. It felt nice on his skin, lining every fiber of his being, and when the sound left, the feeling faded, leaving a blazing heat. He flinched violently as the heat reignited his mind, back to full capacity.
He grimaced behind the shadow of his visor, his head was thumping, from the sudden stampede of thoughts, ideas, and feelings that his mind had previously removed from his mind since stepping foot on the island. It was easier to forget a pain that turned your brain into a liquid that leaked from your ears, that evaporated before it even reached his ear lobes, but now it had all been returned back to him, even if he didn't want it. His hair stood on end from the sensations running through his body, before a secondary feeling overtook the initial. His eyes drooped from the overwhelming narcotic of sensations.
"He has woken, Elder."
His vision cleared completely at the whisper from behind his ear. Kanaft. He got up, instantly, he was staring into a large feathered black chest the size of a wall. Stealing a glance at his partner's eyes, he was quick to notice something. Besides the fact that he could see tinges of red in the bird's feathers from the clear radiance behind him, there was a subtler difference between the two observations, and the one he saw first: Kanaft's attention was not on him. His beady black eyes were looking into something far off, while far above even his great stature. Kanaft wasn't a truly emotional being, at least, he wasn't like that often. Right now, however, was perhaps the only time he'd ever seen, and would ever see so much emotion on his face. He knew vaguely why such reverence was in his partner's eyes. There was this emanating heat throughout everything around him, that only really felt warm. It made his skin tingle in happiness. His heart thumped a little faster, or maybe it was a little slower, but he finally understood after a single realization hit him. Leakages; there was no leakage of power, coming from behind him. He froze, still staring into Kanaft's eyes, before, thawing, and, almost imperceptibly fast, turned on his toes, and saw the Lord of Fire.
Where a murky, slightly diseased tree once stood, slumbering, a new, radiant white fire burned. It was…beautiful. Not a single flake of fire escaped the main body, it shone dimly, not expressing its full, ravaging might. It was akin to a gigantic bonfire in its current form, but the knight was quick to understand something. The fire was convulsing–no. It wasn't convulsing. That would imply something was wrong, but it was more like the manipulation of a pyromancer, like Kanaft.
His thoughts were cut off when the fire stretched to the left and right of it, creating a wall of fire that could bloat the imposter sun above if it was just a fraction of a unit larger. If he wasn't forced to stay lucid, his mind might've crumbled, but there was no way to know for certain.
The fire retreated into itself, condensing, hardening, and strengthening. It was a fascinating sight, to the knight. This was something only he and Kanaft would ever experience in this lifetime. Or any lifetime, really. A single flame the size of one of the many branches below formed a single feather in a short motion. It was shortly followed by hundreds of its brethren, forming outward from the outermost reaches inwards. The radiance was growing brighter with each white feather that generated from the fire storm. He wanted to shut his eyes. It was an instinctual reaction to seeing the white gates of the unknown, but before he could, a single bead of black appeared across the single wing which had been formed into the hurricane of divine power. The single black dot on the right wing single handedly kept the gates shut, somehow. It was… odd, but as he tried to converge on a conclusion as to how such an insignificant mode of black could keep him in this plane of existence, he simply failed in it. Not a single thought in his mind seemed worthy of being paid attention to in this heated moment of rebirth. It all slipped through the cracks, never to be seen or heard of again.
The single mode of black was followed by another, then another, not unlike the never-ending sprouts of fiery feathers which had already sculpted, and conjured into a wide, stark torso. It could've been deemed an ugly disease, as the points of black continued to conquer the white flame in but moments after they had been generated by the fire. The second wing formed faster than the first one did, and as the black dots caught up with the fire, the knight noticed it. There was something moving under the black blotches on the coat of divine fire, wriggling and writhing.
From the pinnacle of the torso, the beginning of a neck began to emerge. Two short pillars of fire spewed from either side of the underbelly, forming thin legs and feet that could likely crush anything on this planet with little to no effort needed to turn it into a splatter, or simply dust in the wind. The knight had only registered them in passing, because he was currently staring down an eyeless, featureless head. Two charcoal lights permeated either side of its head, not too far from its white beak. Not a moment later the infectious black dots had made their way wing to wing, beak to still-forming tail-feather, with something squirming under every single one.
His knees swayed left to right, gently. His eyes glazed over, as he stared at the now gray-looking phoenix. Thoughtless, pinky trembling, and an endless well of reverent emotions he had never felt before. The stygian fist to his left arm balled till his fake, midnight knuckles ached a dull throb, echoing upward the shadow forming his arm, reaching the beginning of junction between his true shoulder and the shadow manipulated into the rest of it, yet his attention never strayed. The finer details were quick to accumulate. Feathers sharpened. Black dots shrank into themselves, though they still throbbed. Then, the black leeches opened. Radiant yellow flames erupted from each. Yes, divinity brimmed in each of the endless eyes dotting the body of Lord Eos, but there was also a grand intelligence in each eye, full with the souls of thousands of minor, yet beautiful souls, congregating together to view the world from behind a gate of fire.
'Eyes.' He was shorter now. No, his knees had actually given out under a momentary leakage of power. The muddy surface consumed his knees slowly, as he only watched, entranced, muted, and distant.
Behind the citrine eyes of fire, color bled into the pearlescent body. Just as the distant stars looked like twinkles of white in the night, the beautiful fire in front of the knight looked not unlike them, just far larger than the tiny blips above, at least initially. When the first sparks of color emerged from deep within its core, feeling returned to the knight's knees and lower. The feeling of the murky surface on his second layer of skin was a relief and seemingly returned the thoughts to him, and in that moment of thought, the knight missed the spark of orange transform the entire body of the phoenix into a beautiful shade, richer than the spark, yet duller than the perfect shade of white the body had been before. Instantly, the knight came upon a rather dire conclusion.
'The divinity… the white… both were seducing me…' That wasn't a good sign, but at least he could function now, right? He stood straight quickly, eyeing the body of Lord Eos warily. The momentary leakage from a few short seconds prior, wasn't helping in the matter of his motor functions, but with it already having disappeared it was only minor in comparison, or was it? The knight's thoughts were so convoluted with confusion, that he failed to notice a pair of eyes, each double his height the color of yellow jade, staring at him, an alien intellect expressing nothing through them. He didn't wait for the knight to realize, either. Just as Eos' voice stopped the knight's refraining thoughts, it cleared the night sky, and brought life to the drought. There was nothing left to be fought–so he said to the knight:
"You are a curious creature, Young Immortal."