The Returning Legend

A Rare Sight

On the fourth week, he was reminded of his first week. There were loud noises happening above him but he couldn't tell what was making the noise. He decided to cheat a little for the first time and mist traveled closer. When he reformed, he instantly recognized the sounds. It was the sounds of battle and bloodshed. He could hear the clanging of metal against metal and screams of men being killed. It had been many years since he had heard a battle like this and he definitely wanted to investigate.

As he neared, Omega could feel the heat start to rise when it should be falling because of the lack of air and increase of pressure. However, clearly, that wasn't the case on this mountain. When he was almost there, he could see flames licking the trees and spreading throughout the forest. He instantly wondered why anybody would start a fire on a mountain filled with trees. Omega lowered the flames so they wouldn't spread any farther and mist traveled up to the source of the noise.

He reformed on the tree line and was shocked by what he saw. In the middle of a clearing laid a metal and charred wood nest. It was at least 30 feet long and wide and housed one of the most beautiful birds Omega had ever seen ... a phoenix. It had a wingspan of at least 22 feet. It had fiery red feathers on the top half of its wings and the side of its body while brilliant orange covered its belly and lower tips of its wings. It had sharp, reddish/purplish claws that could probably slice through anything as easy as a knife would slice through butter. Its tail feathers were a mix between the red and orange and contained much larger feathers. Fire could be found all over the bird but it mainly concentrated on its back, wing tips, and tail feathers. At first, Omega was entranced at the beauty and power of the fire bird but was quickly pulled away from his thoughts by a shrill screech that shouldn't come from such a majestic bird. He then looked at the armored men bustling around and surrounding the bird.

There were at least fifty of them on the ground dead and fifty more still fighting. He wondered how the men could possible stand the heat and flames but his question was answer when the phoenix shot flames at one of the men. All he did was raise his shield and a dome covered him that repelled the flames and knocked them to the side leaving the man completely unharmed. The only attacks the phoenix could use were physical attacks. However, every man had sharp swords that cut the phoenix whenever it attacked.

After 5 more minutes of fighting, the phoenix finally collapsed leaving 60 men dead, 10 severely wounded, and 30 just plain exhausted. When the phoenix collapsed, Omega could tell why she was fighting so hard instead of flying away. An egg was just below the phoenix. A white egg shell with swirling designs of orange and red blending together gave the egg a unique look that basically screamed, 'Hey! I'm some powerful mythical creature.' It didn't take a genius to understand that the bandits were after the egg while the mother protected the egg.

Omega read a book during his travels that talked about different mythical creatures. Apparently, there were only around 20 phoenixes in the entire universe and they could only produce one egg every 10,000 years which made them extremely rare. Omega had no clue how much a phoenix egg would sell on the market but he knew it would be an exorbitant amount. Phoenixes were also extremely hard to find and pretty much impossible to capture. There were only a few ways to capture a phoenix: befriending them, somehow sneaking up on them and capturing them, or waiting until a mother was protecting her egg so she couldn't fly away.

The dying mother laid in her nest, bloodied and broken. She could do nothing to stop the vile men from taking her child and having their way with it. She couldn't understand how people would attack and kill mothers just to steal their child. They only cared about the profit they would receive should they succeed and it sickened her. She was heartbroken that her child would not survive after all the years in its egg but knew she couldn't do anything more. She could barely even move an inch because of exhaustion and the many injuries littering her body. She hoped beyond hope that something could help her but knew there wasn't anything coming to her aid. Her mate was out on a hunting trip for another few months and she knew he would be devastated when he returned.