Airborne Wings

Chapter twenty-one- Milo

I coughed and sputtered, getting all of the water out of my lungs. I had washed ashore on a small grassy field right in front of a CASTLE. The banners hanging from the castle walls said, "Fire Den Castle," streaked across them, with a symbol of a Phoenix posing. It looked actually pretty cool; I wondered how long it took to even make them in the first place, let alone the actual palace itself... It was HUGE! ...Like, almost a million times the size of me; except, actually, probably way more than that, because of how tall it was; the very tip of it you couldn't even see, because it was above the clouds. I wondered if there was a window up there, and if so, how dizzy it would make the human –or probably Phoenix in this case— who looked out of it feel.

I sit up and stretch, filling my lungs up with as much air as I can. It was almost nightfall, so I needed to find a place to sleep. Somewhere safe where I wouldn't be able to fall off an edge of a cliff by tossing and turning; I had had enough scares as it was. Seriously.

I found a huge field of flowers, and then, to my surprise, a small gap where I could sleep under the flowers' protection. I decided to sleep there for the night. Also, good night. See y'all tomorrow mornin'.

I stretch and sit up in the early rays of sunlight that filtered through my flowery canopy of... well, flowers. I roll out of my peaceful sleeping spot –avoiding the Rose stems— and stretch again because it is SO HARD to stretch with spiky plant stems blocking you, plus there was barely enough room to stretch unless you did it on your back like I had to do. Once I was free from the poky bushes, I stood up and stretched. When I realized that the whole place was FULL of Phoenixes walking around, I decided to hide in the bushes just up until they left. I don't want to catch any more attention than I might have already done. I sigh and wait.

When the noise stopped, I peeked out of the bushes and instead saw Kyra and a black, blue, and white phoenix. I sit up and decide to listen to their conversation. Instead of getting what I wanted, they left right away. As if they saw me, they paused mid step. I hurriedly climbed back inside the Bush and hoped that what I thought happened wasn't true.

After noticing that nothing was there, Kyra and the other Phoenix left. I breathe a sigh of relief and climb out of the Bush quickly. I looked up at the Sky and realized that it was in the middle of the night, not daytime. Moonlight reflected off the Flowers and grass and stars scattered all over the darkened Sky, reminding me of fresh memories of stargazing with Twirl. But that was gone now, and there wasn't a thing I could do, even if I wanted or tried to. Shaking all the sadness that swirled around in my thoughts away, I started to walk to the entrance of the Castle.

The Castle entrance was huge, and I couldn't help but notice how much blood littered the sand in front of me. I wondered how Kyra could ever stand this much gore. I knew I couldn't, and I'd already seen too much blood for my age.

I started for the sand, hoping for a clue of where Kyra had gone. When I got to the middle of the sand, though, I stopped dead in my tracks.

A brown phoenix stood by another brown phoenix, holding a glass orb. Blue swirled up inside it, entering the brown phoenixes' eyes. They turned instantly grey, and he hobbled over to the other side of the arena.

"Alder," the phoenix holding the orb said. "You will kill Ferno, retrieve his soul, and kill all his friends. You will capture Terra. She did her part, but she needs a new dose; she has remembered everything, and we can't have that, now can we," she grins. "Go, and do not anger me, for if you do, I will take your power and eat your soul." Just like magic, Alder disappeared.

"Don't worry, Master Widow, I will save you if it is the last thing I do." I watched until my consciousness drifted away, and instead, a sharp sleepiness overwhelmed my body.