Curse of the Phoenix

Chapter 9 - Phoenix, Call me Phoenix

"What a drag."

Darkness all around him. Glass pillars circled the stone room while the crackling fire inside heated his skin. Strange. The fire was dim and small, but its strength was enough to melt anything close to it. The glass held the heat while smells of fragrant lavender, sweet cinnamon, strong angelica and many more herbs entered his nose.

Although it was dark, he knew someone was there.

"Well? Don't you have a thousand annoying questions to say?" The person had an authoritative voice, but it also seemed carefree.

"Who are you?" Matt asked, while sweat rolled down his face. This fire was too hot.

Suddenly, a snap resonated, and the flames grew brighter, but not hotter. In front of him were stairs that led to a tall throne. On it was a brown-skinned man with fire-colored eyes, wearing two unstitched white cloths covering his body, except for the left part of his well-built chest. The man sneered at him while a golden wreath sat on his swept black hair.

"It doesn't matter who I am. I've summoned you here for something very important," he said.

"And what's that?"

"I summoned you because you were about to blabber to your girlfriend!"

Matt stood silent for a moment. "Aelia?! She's not my—"

"Stop it, fledgling. You're clearly into her. She's into you too, so just go out with her."

"W-What?! I mean, maybe I should. But I don't know where, I also haven't asked a girl out before—"

"Fledgling, this isn't some 'how to get the girl' lesson."

"S-Sorry... Wait. Who are you calling fledgling?"

"You, of course! Don't tell me you don't know what it means."

"Well, no, not really..."

The man sighed again.

Suddenly, a cruel force clenched Matt's chest. He fell down and gasped for air, but no air came. He gritted his teeth and growled as the pain spread throughout his body. His hand clenched his chest as an invisible force choked his heart. But just when he was about the brink of death, it stopped.

He salvaged a long breath of air and sighed as he lied on the ground. What the...

"This is as expected."

"What... do you mean?" Matt said in a faint voice.

"You can't stay here for long, fledgling. Since your heart can't handle the pressure in this room, you'll keep getting heart attacks. Once over ten minutes, your heart will blow and you'll be a rotting, dead body in my throne room."

"What?!" His strength came back to him and he jolted up.

"That's why you should listen to me. So we can finish this up."

Matt nodded and sat down like a student listening to a teacher.

"First, that dream you had was real. I gave it to you."

"It was?!"

"Don't interrupt!"

Matt shut his mouth again.

"Like I was saying, that dream you had will happen, unless you do something about it, but you can't tell it to anyone. If you do, you'll break the balance of time, space and the whole cosmos itself."

Matt wanted to say something, but the man didn't look like he was going to listen.

"The reason you had that dream is to stop it. If you fail, then..." he shrugged, "everyone dies. Simple as that. Now its time for you to go back, before you become a corpse in my throne room." He raised his hand to snap his fingers but—