Phoenix Rising

The Prophecy Cards

I wake up smelling the fresh air and I feel wonderful. I get dressed and go to the breakfast room to have a meal.

Sadly, it's bland cereal again. Emilea and Michael ask me to sit by them, but of course I chose to sit by Emilea. I inhale my cereal quicker than I thought I would. Once breakfast is over I say goodbye to Emilea and go out to the training center to work on my hand to hand combat with Michael. Michael is waiting for me when I get there. He's already setting up the purple mat on the floor and he is standing in a circle. Within the circle were many different shapes and I didn't understand them at all.

"The different shapes represent different stances and attacks you are going to eventually learn." He answers to my train of thought. "The first thing I am going to teach you today is that you have to use your enemies force against them. Use your powers and see what their next move is. You can also make them think you are somewhere you aren't. And always remember when you are fighting another psychic to never plan out your attacks. You have to formulate plans the second before you do them. When it comes to battles, we are the hardest to beat." Michael encourages. He shows an example by punching towards my chest. I duck, let his fist fly over my shoulder, and throw him over my head. He smoothly lands on his back and I quickly snap around quickly and hold my fist above his neck like I held a blade in my hand.

"Well done." He congratulates. I jump up and he flips graciously onto his feet.

I see Emily walking towards use and I know that it must not be good by the look on her face.

"Dylan wanted to speak with us as soon as possible. We better get it over with now than later." She looks scared and when she sees how white Michael's eyes are she looks even worse.

I'm starting to get a little nervous as well. What would he need to talk to us about now? Why is Emilea so scared?

"We can continue my training later?" I ask Michael.

"Of course. Business with Dylan is definitely more important than training." He says sarcastically with a smirk. "Just hurry back, I don't have all day."

"What do you think is a matter?" I ask Emilea as we are quickly walking toward his office.

"He is in danger and will most likely die today. We need to know as much information about the prophecy before that happens."

We walk over to his office and knock on his door. We wait for an answer and none came. After waiting for about two minutes patiently, we hear a muffled yell. I broke the door down and see Casmir bleeding on the floor.

"Derah was here, but he most likely ran away. You must retrieve the rest of the Phoenix Artifacts before he achieves his goal. Here," he hands me three envelopes that he takes out of his coat pocket, each with a different symbol. The first card has a Cross imprinted on it. "Use these to help you find the artifacts and kill The Phoenix King once and for all. My time has ended, as I knew it would soon. I thought I might have had more time to tell you more information but I don't. Be careful, The phoenix is rising. Once the phoenix is completely raised you better hope that he doesn't kill you." Dylan barely croaks out.

"What is his goal?" I ask impatiently. Before I finish the sentence I know he is dead. I check for his pulse and there is none. I try to resuscitate him to no success. I gave up at sat on the floor in failure.

He is bleeding from a knife wound in his abdomen and it looks deep and wide and the knife had been left on the floor. The handle of the knife is a giant black phoenix. The blade itself is made from ebony and is about a foot long.

Emilea touches his head and she slowly turns him into her orange dust.

"Open the first letter." Emilea commands angrily. "We need to get these and kill this monster as soon as possible."

I open the first letter and inside is just a small index card sized piece of paper. Written on it was a little poem. The title is "Phoenix Rising".