Solaryn's fire died for the first time that night.
It wasn't the first time he had almost died. For millions of years he had always survived. Always came back no matter how close he got to the edge. It was normal. But tonight was different, and he could feel it from the start.
The army that came moved cleanly. Not angry villagers swinging torches and screaming. These people were calm, organized, and had clearly trained for this moment for a very long time. They moved together like one machine. Same steps. Same spacing. And their eyes had zero fear in them.
That was what put Solaryn on edge. Humans were usually afraid of him.
The weapons in their hands weren't normal either. Solaryn saw it from above before he landed. There were carvings on the metal, carvings he recognized from a memory that was very, very old. Older than any kingdom standing in this world right now. And the moment he saw those carvings, one name came to his mind.
The Ashen Council.
He landed not because he couldn't escape. He could escape. Easily. But there were twenty three villages behind that hill, and Solaryn had spent millions of years trying not to care about human problems. Unfortunately, he still hadn't managed it.
Figures, he thought.
The fight went on for a long time.
Solaryn burned the first line. His fire came out big and hot, same as always. First line gone. Then the second line came forward, he burned them too. Gone too. But the third line was different. They came with shields that had the same carvings as the weapons, and when Solaryn's fire hit those shields, it didn't go through.
It bounced back.
Solaryn stepped back a little. This was the first time this had ever happened in his very long life. His fire always won. Always. But not now.
He still had plenty of other ways. Millions of years of living had taught him a lot. But when he tried to use something else, something felt wrong inside him. Not normal pain. More like something was leaking from the inside. Something kept flowing out slowly, and he couldn't close it.
Slowly the leak got faster.
They don't want to kill me, he thought. They want to take something from me.
He knew what they wanted to take. The core of himself. The source of all his fire. Something that had been inside him long before this world existed.
Knowing all that unfortunately didn't make his situation any better.
At some point, Solaryn stopped moving.
Not giving up. He just stood still and looked around. His legs felt heavy in a strange way, because normally he flew and rarely used them. Now they felt like stone.
The sky above the hill was dark. Not pitch black, but dark with a color that was hard to describe. A color that only existed for a moment, before morning came or before heavy rain fell. Down below, thousands of torches moved. From up here, it looked like stars falling to the ground.
Solaryn had seen a lot of beautiful things in his life. The first sun that ever rose in the sky. The great ocean when no one had given it a name yet. The first cities humans built with their own hands, slowly, with great effort. He could never decide whether humans were remarkable creatures or just very stubborn ones.
Probably the second one, he concluded.
Among all the torches down there, one person stood the most still. Grey robe, carrying nothing, eyes looking up at Solaryn from far away. Their movements were very calm. Like someone who had waited for this moment for a very long time and was finally being proven right.
Solaryn wondered how long they had prepared for this. How many generations of people had worked hard to get to this night. How many failed attempts before they finally found something that worked.
Must have been a long time, he thought. Humans are like that. When they're scared enough of something, they don't stop until it's gone.
When Solaryn finally fell, there was no big sound. No explosion. No drama.
It just felt normal. Calm even.
Cold ground under his body. Grass flattened beneath him. The smell of wet dirt and smoke and something like hot metal. The sound of footsteps slowly getting closer, then stopping right beside him.
The person in the grey robe crouched right in front of Solaryn's face. Stared at him for a long time. Then smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile.
"Heh. So this is what you look like when you die."
Solaryn didn't answer.
"You know how long we've been waiting for this?" The person laughed quietly, but their eyes didn't laugh at all. "Generations. Not years, not decades. Generations. My great grandfather died before seeing this. His father too. And his father before that."
They grabbed Solaryn's jaw and forced his face upward.
"And you? You didn't even know we existed. Never looked our way once. Just small humans, right. Not important, right."
Their hand let go. They stood up and brushed the dust off their knees.
"Funny. The small unimportant humans are the ones who brought you down."
They turned around, already walking away.
"Take him. Take everything that can be taken."
Solaryn could only look at the sky above. The sky that was starting to brighten toward morning.
I've seen so many dawns, he thought. But from down here it feels different.
Then everything went dark.
The darkness was warm. Not empty, not cold. And strangely, it didn't feel like something ending. It felt like something about to begin.
Then suddenly there was light.
Then there was sound.
Then something cold and wet all over his body, a very loud noise in his ears, and everything felt way too crowded way too fast.
Kaelion opened his eyes.
Wooden ceiling. Candlelight. A woman crying while looking at him with a face that was somewhere between relief and disbelief.
Kaelion looked at his hand.
Wait wait wait wait wait.
He tried to lift his head. His head fell to the side.
He tried again.
Fell again.
He tried again more seriously.
Fell again to the same side.
What.
He looked at his hand again. Small. Chubby. Red. His fingers were short and fat and he could have swallowed them whole back when he still had a mouth wide enough to swallow a city.
He tried to move his index finger.
It moved a little.
Then went back.
He tried again.
Went back again.
This finger. This finger that was smaller than his smallest scale back then. Couldn't be moved.
He took short quick breaths.
Wings first. Try to feel his wings.
He felt his back.
Nothing.
Flat. Smooth. Even though his wings used to stretch wide enough to cover half a city.
He felt again more carefully.
Still nothing.
Fire. Try to feel his fire. The fire that had been inside him since before the first human was born. Fire hot enough to melt rock in seconds.
He focused.
Nothing.
Focused harder.
Nothing.
FOCUSED EVEN HARDER.
Empty. Cold. Nothing at all.
There was only one thing.
Hunger.
His stomach growled.
I, he thought slowly, am the oldest phoenix that has ever existed. Millions of years I have lived. My fire could burn a forest in one breath. When I spread my wings, the wind could knock down every tree below me. The whole world used to be afraid of my name.
And now.
I can't even lift my own head.
The woman who had been crying suddenly smiled wide, picked him up gently, and said "oh my goodness, so precious, mama's baby."
He couldn't do anything.
At all.
Solaryn, the phoenix who had once made the sky tremble, could only sit there being hugged by a stranger who called him mama's baby.
Then because there was nothing else to do, and because his stomach was still growling, he cried.
Very loudly.