A.N. Song on the side was played on repeat until this chapter was complete - thought it might help you with the ambience :)
Chapter 79
Wolf steadied his breath, staring fiercely back at the final Star's single eyed gaze. He needed to get a grip on himself, just a little bit. It would not do to stand before the greatest challenge in the history of his world and think only of the Phoenix. It was a sure way to get himself killed.
And if Wolf was going to be repaying her in some way, it would be by winning.
It was still dark, too dark to see out across the plains, but Wolf knew his brother would be out there somewhere, sometime soon. And the Phoenix was amongst those grasses as well, disappearing into the distance. If she could bring him back to life, she could make herself another prison. A stronger one, a smaller one; more hidden.
It would be a place he would never find.
The Stars tugged eagerly at his resolve, pulling him in. Wolf sighed, wondering if this frame of mind would prove tantamount to suicide, and gave in to their persuasion.
He hovered in the in-between for the longest he ever had, blinded by Starlight and saturated in his lethargy. He was hardly over the threshold but still it made him theirs and slowly, despite his distinct lack of motivation, white light turned to reality.
Wolf's feet landed silently on desert sand and he looked up into a world that was too familiar. It stung him that, on the day he lost the Phoenix, he was shown such a potent reminder of where he had first found her. The earth had cracked beneath scorching sunlight, blistered and dry. It was a cheerless place, the final Star. For the ground was red, the sky blue and there lay nothing in-between. The edges drifted off, fading into the distant horizon, allowing only one thing to draw his gaze.
A figure, masked by the haze of eternal heat. She stood, not far from him and yet infinitely too distant to grasp, delicate fingers already clutching the hilt of a rusted peasant's blade.
"Phoenix?"
Wolf blinked the remnants of Starlight from his eyes, striding tentatively toward her. She nodded, tersely, and he knew immediately that something was wrong.
"I don't understand." He said. "What are you doing here?"
Phoenix sighed and, for the first time, he noticed the tears in her eyes.
"What is going on?"
"What has proven itself greater than the wolf, Wolf?"
"The Phoenix." He replied, looking around himself, bewildered. Realisation was dawning, though he did not wish it to be so.
She sighed, silent tears trickling over her cheeks. "The Stars give all, that they might take it away."
"Do you want to fight me?" Wolf asked, stepping slowly toward her. She continued to grasp his sword with graceless desperation but he was just happy that he was seeing her again. "We have fought a hundred times before."
And not once had he won.
"My will means nothing when we must follow the rules."
"I need not follow your rules, Phoenix, they are commandments I do not even know."
Her blade continued to rest uncharacteristically limp at her side but Phoenix drew up her back at his words, reciting, as though from an old textbook, the rules she must have learnt in a similar position to his.
"The Stars are an entity of infinite power. No man can rule all, no monarch has the right to infinity. And so no king shall be a player and no player a king."
Wolf nodded, though the glaze in her eyes implied she could hardly see him.
"To die in the Stars is to become the Stars. And to become a player is to forfeit the soul. When a man has gifted the part of him he has a right to pass on only once, he will not have his spirit returned."
"It may have been useful to know some of these before we began." Wolf mumbled. But she wasn't listening and he knew it would have made no difference.
"A player is borne of blood. There are no debts in the Stars and to win without death is no victory.
"Twelve Stars there are, and each must be won or lost. A player might not renege of the pledge of entry. To break through the star at the gateway is to commit to victory or death.
"Magic will be awarded to the King of Twelve Stars, magic that, by its very definition, is limited only by the wielder's desire. But every victory has its price, Wolf, and to work with the threads of reality, one must not be a part of them.
"And the final rule, the rule we must follow now. There must always be only one monarch of Twelve Stars, one man to wield the magic, for he must be ever alone."
Phoenix closed her eyes as she finished her statement, speaking almost to herself. "I would be alone no more."
She was not alone, he would not let her be. Red had created the Phoenix, the Phoenix had created the Wolf and it pained him to stand before her instead of at her side. She was cold, she was hollow and she was cruel but she was also his and she deserved no pain.
"Let me play this Star, Phoenix, we need not battle. I would fight for immortality. I would be ever at your side."
"You are a Lord of Eleven, Wolf, but they call me the Queen of Twelve Stars for a reason."
"I am not going to fight for succession. That should not be the task of the final Star - it is wrong."
"Then you will die."
"No." He had not drawn a blade and he vowed then never to do so, never to go before her in earnest. "We shall simply go home."
She closed her eyes and recited once more her ridiculous rule.
"A player might not renege of the pledge of entry. To break through the star at the gateway is to commit to victory or death."
"And you knew." He accused, breaking a little beneath her emotionless monotone. "All the way, you knew you were priming me only to destroy me. When you promised me victory, the price you would not tell was my life at your hand. Alone you must be for magic, so I understand. But why did you even bother? Why take me to your side, why return the beating of my heart? Was it only for the pleasure of stilling it yourself?"
"This is not a battle I wish to win, Wolf." She was still crying, still tiny beneath the blaze of this punishing sun. "I have had enough of my guilt."
"Tell me true, Phoenix. What time is this, what place?"
"The right one."
"So I must kill you - that is what you expect of me?"
He could not do it.
She…
He could not do it.
This morning he had thought he had lost her. The concept of forgetting her face, of stilling the wisdom of her tongue; it was unthinkable. For as long as he could remember, when he had loved the Stars, what he had really loved was the Phoenix.
"I won't do it."
"Then you would have me defeat you?"
She shuddered and for a second he thought she would fall.
"I cannot do that, Wolf, I…" She choked on her passion, on the terror that was slowly beginning to roll from her shoulders, and slipped slowly to the desert floor. "Do not make me do it again."
"Yellow Cat." He breathed and she nodded mutely, burying her head in her knees. "So this is your great betrayal?" He asked.
She had been staring vacantly at the dust beneath her feet but now she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, waving a single arm behind her head.
Wolf looked up, taking in the empty space behind her, only to see two silent figures emerge from the dust.
"Yellow Cat." Phoenix whispered, pointing to the woman that now stood at her left shoulder. Wolf gazed silently into the dead face of the woman he had seen briefly just the day before. Phoenix continued to cover her eyes, unable to take in the reminder of her sin, but she was the Queen of Twelve Stars and she was alone; her finger drew a perfect line to the woman's breast. Nothing could escape her senses.
To fight the Phoenix would be to sign the warrant of his death.
Yellow Cat smiled weakly at him, but her focus remained eternally on the Phoenix, on the huddled mess of something that should have been great.
"I told her not to finish, I told her not to take the twelfth Star. She ignored me and I killed her."
Her blunt words sent shivers up his spine, shivers that were exaggerated by the heavy tremble of the Phoenix's shoulders.
"Red." Phoenix clarified, moving the direction of her index finger to take in the man that scowled at her right shoulder. "A king must not be a player. He ignored the rules. And I killed him."
So this was the Red king, the creator of the Phoenix. His arms were crossed, his shoulders broad and his eyes cruel. He did not wish to be here, that much was clear, and Wolf guessed a man like that would not forgive an eternity at the whim of his servant.
"These are the deaths that have made me a pariah, these were the deaths that drove me from my world. They are my biggest regrets and the price I have paid for the magic I did not want." Phoenix made no movement as more figures slowly began to appear in the desert behind her.
"I will be yours." She predicted, ominously. "My memory will be the price you pay, your burden to bear. The Stars give everything that they might take it away."
"Not likely." He protested. "It is I that will die today."
The creatures behind her were growing inexorably in number, figure after figure after figure. Cold heartless things, a mass of death and curse that stretched far beyond the scope of the distant horizon.
Phoenix ignored him, ignored them, rocking slightly as the first of the crowd behind her reached her back, slotting easily in-between the two figures that already stood there.
"The Eagle." She announced. "A name your people have forgotten. He was the king I killed to take my crown."
The Eagle certainly looked old fashioned, his tunic faded beyond recognition and his eyes glazed.
"By the time I made it to this desert, he had been alone here for three centuries. He begged me to kill him and I did as much. I had no pride in his death but a player is borne of blood. There are no debts in the Stars and to win without death is no victory."
The next drew up at the Eagle's side, a great beast of man. Phoenix remained with her back turned and her eyes closed. She had not been able to look at a single one.
"Bear." She declared. "Dead in the Eagle's claws."
And the next.
"Fox, defeated by the Bear, who killed Scarab, the woman that killed the Lynx…
"You see, Wolf, when we first met you called me the first or the second, depending on the way the stories were told. But the truth is that the Stars are much older than anyone realises, to rule them is not a unique experience. And today you will join a hierarchy of a number greater than the pebbles of Eyrr."
Phoenix gave him a second to take in the sheer scope of the mass behind her, men and women that stretched, hundreds deep, into the far reaches of infinity. Each was different, no soldiers these, but creatures of violence and passion, the only similarity the cool callousness of their gaze.
And then, with a single wave of her hand, they were gone and he found himself alone with her again.
"They will be yours." She whispered. "Every single one of them. The greatest players in history, tied to your every command. For this level is designed to leave you abandoned, to render you alone enough to grasp all the magic in your soul. They will become real to the Motherland if you let no other close, Wolf. Do you understand?"
"An army." He breathed. "You would give me an army of legends."
Phoenix nodded pathetically, still huddled in the material of her tunic.
"Moll could destroy Seira a hundred times over with this."
"Yes." Phoenix replied. "I have shown you your victory." She looked up then, the tears dry, the iron in her gaze. "But first you must pay your price, you must repay me the favour of my friendship with the point of my sword."
Slowly she began to straighten. And she was weak no more. She was ready, she was determined. She had returned to the fire in her blood, the steel of her heart. "Before one is awarded the right to return home, there will be blood on this sand. Wolf, you had better ensure it is mine."