“To be one with fire you must let go of all and embrace the purge. Let it cleanse your very being. Let go all attachments even be ready to let go of your physical existence…”
“Are you certain you want to take this path?”
The raven-haired girl closed the grimoire and ran her fingers on its hard-bound cover admiring the prints of fire and the Phoenix.
“Yes… I am certain.” She turned to the woman who asked her the question and replied.
“If this is the way in which I can prevent my family from inflicting the malice they bore towards the innocent…” she thought.
The days of the raven-haired mage were told in verses unsung for ages. She was the last of the Phoenix mages to return to the Earth upon her demise; for the one that carried on her legacy ascended to the heavens without much that remained of her on the Earth.
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“That felt like yesterday yet the days before that feels almost like a dream...” The raven-haired woman thought as she kindled the fire in the cave. She could not get a shut eye and decided to watch the fire instead. By the light of the fire she could see the girl and the dragon fast asleep.
“She really was a kind lady who welcomes everyone with open arms… To think she’d give away decades of her years to save us both... ”
The fire crackled in the darkness touching the walls of the cave with its faint glow. Everything felt peaceful and serene and she could but recall the days of the havoc of her youth and how they felt like a long lost dream after a woman who was supposedly a complete stranger took her in.
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“I couldn’t thank you enough for taking me under your wing.” The raven-haired mage bowed. The time for her to leave was nigh, the world outside awaits her ventures as an independent mage, the only mage apart from the woman who took her in who had mastered the Phoenix art.
“You’re like a daughter to me, Azalea. You can always come back whenever there is the need to…no…you can come back anytime you wish.” The woman spoke.
And she did return when during one of her ventures she overheard one village after another speaking of the evil serpentine dragon that lurks in a cave nearby the cottage her mentor resides. When she arrived at her mentor’s cottage she was out of breath.
“It’s my family…” she panted. “…they want the dragon’s head on a platter if they could. To think they would stoop that low for that demon!”
“The moment they drove their own flesh and blood away for that demon… that’s when they’ve already stooped so low that they cannot get back up.” The woman responded.
“You said you have the jar prepared, Azalea?” she asked.
The raven-haired mage nodded her head.
“Hand it to me. I’ll get the dragon’s core. You stay here and keep watch of our cove… I’ll be back in a while.” The woman said.
“Alright… but promise you’ll let me revive him. If anybody has to pay the price for necromancy it should be me.” She replied.
“I’ll let you revive him.” The woman replied as she closed the door behind her.
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Memories flooded her mind as she watched the fire die out. She walked out the cave and gazed at the morning star as it disappeared slowly from the sky when the first rays of sunlight hits the Earth from beneath the dark green hills. She recalled days when she would challenge herself and her mentor to gulp down their cups of hot tea whenever they were in a hurry to head out somewhere. She recalled her mentor’s kindness, generosity, sacrifice and she could not help but think how fortunate she was to have come across such a soul yet she could not help feeling the guilt slowly consume her when she thinks of the girl that she had taken in under her wing if the girl were to ever discover the truth. She remembered the last she ever saw of her mentor, how the embers got blown by the wind and how her smile remained unfaltered even then.
“I’ll let you revive him, it seems…To think she’d catch me off guard with the Art of Reconstruction …”
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A/N
Dear readers,
For those of you who haven't realised, the raven-haired woman's mentor was the protagonist's grandmother.
The Art of Reconstruction is the art where one uses half-truths (if you'd like to call it that way) to answer without revealing too much and without telling a lie.
Once again... Thank you for reading :)
May your imaginations live on.
~Zylixis
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The Dragon's Abode(Compressed)
Fantasy"𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮 𝓪𝓷 𝓮𝓬𝓵𝓲𝓹𝓼𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓽𝓸𝓸 𝓼𝓱𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓹𝓪𝓼𝓼..." In the land of clouds and mist, a legend was told of a black Serpentine Dragon that lived within a cave spanning from one village to the next. This is a story retold, years after...
