Chapter 305: Where Is My City?
The attack began before sunrise. The western gate opened from within and enemy soldiers poured through under the banners of the Carrion Spire (the new city being forged), expecting supporters to meet them.
Solaris met them instead.
She dropped from the wall in a storm of gold feathers.
The first wingbeat threw men from their horses. The second ignited every weapon in the invading ranks. Spears burned inside their owners’ hands. Armor caught fire without heating the flesh beneath, then collapsed into ash around screaming soldiers.
Solaris landed before the gate.
Her father stood beyond it.
Malrec wore ceremonial armor and held a sword forged with one of the Phoenix’s stolen talon fragments.
"You cannot defeat all of them," he said.
Solaris looked at the weapon, feeling the talon trembling inside the blade.
Malrec raised it. "This city needs a new order. It’s the only way it can survive. We have to merge with the others and create the Carrion Spire! Don’t you see, daughter? House Ashen could hold even more power! And the government plans to make us a bastion city!"
Solaris narrowed her eyes at her father like she didn’t even know him. "My city is not a land for sale!"
"That is the Phoenix speaking, Solaris!" Malrec yelled. "Not you! Don’t worry! I’ll kill that damn god bird and set you free!" He charged.
Solaris caught the sword in her bare hand.
Phoenixfire ran through the metal and split the blade. The talon fragment tore itself free and entered the golden feathers along her shoulder.
Malrec stared at the empty hilt.
Solaris placed her palm against his chest.
He looked into her eyes and found no daughter there.
Only judgment. The fire burned through his soul first and his body fell untouched.
Solaris, without a care in the world, turned toward the army.
"Cinderhold is not yours!" she declared. She opened her wings and sped towards them.
The siege became a massacre.
Phoenixfire swept across the streets without touching citizens. Enemy banners ignited. Grace cannons burst from within. Golden hounds formed from her feathers and tore through shield lines while winged serpents hunted Mages across rooftops.
Solaris moved through the city as if every flame belonged to her.
A burning house went cold when she passed, its heat drawn into her hand and fired through three siege towers at once. Smoke bent around fleeing families. Explosions stopped inside fixed circles and collapsed into harmless sparks.
This war went on for two years.
On the third, the surrounding armies finally gave up and Cinderhold survived their onslaught, although barely.
The walls had cracked. The mines were flooded. Half the furnaces had gone dark. Too many of the Phoenix’s remains were still scattered across the world, and without them the city could not recover.
More armies would come.
Solaris knew it.
So did the cities watching from beyond the valley.
To make matters worse, Demons attempted to use the chance to attack the fragile city and claim it as a Citadel.
Solaris, now a 7 Star Fire Mage, fought them on their own and spent herself burning out the Gloom they left behind after she killed them all.
She purified district after district while enemy forces used that chance to attack Cinderhold even more.
It was in this battle that Solaris faced her end. She killed them all. But their attacks left her in a constant state of Bleed and she fell at last beneath the Phoenix.
Her mother found her sitting against one of the great talons.
The golden crown along Solaris’s brow had dimmed. Blood ran from her nose and mouth, though the fire around her still burned clean.
Aveline knelt. "You did it."
Solaris looked at the broken statue.
"You saved the city."
Solaris met her mother’s eyes and asked the only question in her mind. "But for how long?"
Aveline had no answer.
Even right at that moment, the Kingdom Rangers, soldiers, Brigadiers and even Awakeners were arriving. It was inevitable that Cinderhold wouldn’t stop them forever.
Solaris reached up and touched the cold stone above her.
The Phoenix inside her grieved. Its home was about to be taken.
Solaris closed her eyes. "I will return," she whispered. "I will reclaim my nest."
Then she died.
The soldiers and Brigadiers buried her beneath the statue.
Cinderhold quickly went through a transformation. Its remaining leaders accepted protection agreements. Administrative districts were redrawn. Foreign soldiers became permanent guards. The mines passed into new hands.
Eventually, Cinderhold’s name disappeared from official maps. The expanding bastion of Carrion Spire absorbed it.
New streets were built over old ones. The Phoenix Statue was sealed beneath layers of construction and declared unstable. Its furnaces became industrial property. Its surviving citizens were registered as residents of Carrion Spire whether they accepted the name or not.
But fifty years after Solaris’s death, the earth beneath the old statue caught fire.
It began in the grave. First, her bones turned gold under the soil. Ash rose around them, starting as smoke, then as flesh.
A heart formed inside a cage of fire. Grace channels rebuilt themselves. Phoenix Channels followed, brighter and deeper than before.
At dawn, Solaris stepped out of her own grave.
Carrion Spire guards found her standing beneath the sealed statue, naked except for golden feathers and ash.
One raised a weapon.
"Identify yourself."
Solaris looked around at the walls built over Cinderhold. "Where is my city?"
The guard frowned. "This land belongs to Carrion Spire."
That name drove her mad and she instantly burned him against the door.
The guards attacked, yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs. "It’s her! It’s her! The Phoenix Reincarnate!"
Most of them have never seen her, but they all knew the stories of how Carrion Spire had been created.
So this was how Solaris’s second life began. Driven by nothing but vengeance.
She hunted the surviving families that had inherited the Phoenix relics. Some had changed names. Others had become Guild leaders, ministers and royal advisers. Solaris found them through the fragments they carried.
A feather hidden inside a bloodline. A talon used to empower a family sword. Or how about the missing eye installed in a government relic vault.
The parts of her Phoenix Spirit’s body they possessed was what led to their own deaths. Her personal tracking devices.
What was worse, any one who managed to escape her was found quickly using her powerful heat wave tracking abilities. No one could escape Solaris’s fiery judgement.
Each body part she recovered made her stronger.
Each death she delivered made Carrion Spire more afraid.
Cinderhold’s descendants rallied around her. Old maps appeared from hidden cellars. Forgotten symbols were painted on walls. Workers inside the furnaces sabotaged shipments and passed information to her followers.
Solaris thought that she was about to reclaim her city. Her nest as she called it. But in the end, it proved not to be that simple.
Carrion Spire was not the scattered coalition that had invaded fifty years earlier. It had become a bastion of armies, Guilds of Awakeners and government interests.
Its towers were linked by barriers fed through the very furnaces stolen from Cinderhold. Its rulers understood that Solaris could not destroy those systems without burning through the remains of her own home beneath them.
They used Cinderhold as armor.
Solaris launched the uprising anyway.
She struck the central district at night, leading hundreds through old tunnels beneath the city. Her followers seized three furnaces before Carrion Spire understood what was happening. Golden fire climbed the towers. Phoenix symbols appeared across the lower streets.
For several hours, Cinderhold existed again.
Then Carrion Spire closed around it.
Barriers cut the rebels into separate districts. Squads of Awakeners descended from the upper towers. Weapons, built in secret for use against Demons, were turned against Solaris.
She tore through the first and the second armies. But by dawn, half of her forces were dead and the rest trapped behind burning streets.
A Carrion Spire Brigade Commander faced her beneath the old archway.
"You could have had influence," he said. "A seat in government. Your own district in this great city"
Solaris’s wings dragged ash across the stones. "You speak as though a stolen room is payment for my stolen home."
"Cinderhold is gone, Solaris! You cannot free it without destroying Carrion Spire. Without killing thousands of people!"
Solaris glared at him then lowered her face in defeat. "I am beginning to understand that."
The commander raised his weapon. "You failed," he said.
"No," she whispered, her body had begun to burn from within. "I learned."
She released the last of her power through the old tunnels, opening escape paths for the surviving rebels.
Carrion Spire soldiers closed around her.
Solaris rose one final time. She killed enough of them to cover the retreat.
But before she could do anything else, a godspear entered her chest.
Her Phoenixfire burned through the weapon and the man holding it, but the damage had already reached both channel systems. Solaris staggered beneath the statue and fell where she had died in her first life.
The commander stood over her. "Will you return again?"
Solaris smiled through the blood. "In fifty years."
His face changed.
She closed her eyes. "You will not be alive then, Commander, will you?" she groaned. "Pray that your predecessors will be prepared for me."
As the Brigade Commander watched with horror, the fire consumed her body.
The Brigadiers buried the ashes in the statue and took it far away from Carrion Spire, sealed beneath stone and guarded by people who had been taught to fear the day the grave began to burn.
Forty-nine years passed.
Then most of the fiftieth.
Now only two days remained.
The statue had moved from place to place ever since then. Many regarded it as a museum piece to be admired rather than feared. In fact, not very long ago, a certain mayor had given it to a certain Academy as a present.
Solaris’s ashes were somewhere in the Academy’s walls.
----
A/N : Excited for Solaris! <(￣︶￣)>
By the way guys, I need help with the Discord. To be honest, I’m not really good with the app so I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. If you can be a moderator or you have ideas of what I can do to make things fun! Please text me on Discord or you can say something in the comments! Thank you ◉‿◉