The Chronicles of Heaven's War: Burning Phoenix

The Chronicles

of Heaven’s War:

Burning Phoenix

©2015 Ava D. Dohn

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* * *

Table of
Contents
:

Section One:
Hour of the
Crow

Section Two:
Uncertain
Morning

Section Three:
Of Trolls and Fated
Roads

Section Four:
Children of the
Tempest

Section Five:
Whispers of the
Kriggerman

Section One: Hour of the Crow

‘
My dearest TereoAprupneo,

The universe is changing and will never
again be the same. A new day is dawning that both excites me and
fills me with trepidation. We are no longer the masters of our
destiny, but merely soldiers who will carry the banners of coming
warlords. They are new and strange, having minds different from
ours. They not only hate the enemy, mind I say, an enemy whose
names and faces they have never known or loved, they also have a
righteous indignation against that foe burning in their souls. Our
old ways mean nothing to them. Indeed, I believe they view our old
ways as useless baggage carried by romantic fools who desire to
live in the past.

My Terey, you once lamented that our voices
no longer roll with fear-inspiring thunder. I believe these people
will return that thunder to us, but at a cost that causes me to
shudder with unease. The heavens will be soaked with the blood of
our brothers and sisters before the thunder quiets, and our old
ways will lie trampled in the dust forever. They will redefine the
meaning of war and will carry to new heights the arts and designs
of slaughter.

To us, Lowenah is our mother. To these newcomers,
she is their God. Their former mindset of worshipful devotion was
not left behind when they entered our realm. A zealotry born out of
that worship drives them in ways unknown to us. It gives them an
energy that does not rest, that does not sleep. It envelops them
with an all-consuming fire that will not be extinguished, but that
will set this entire universe ablaze. They have become an inferno
that will not die down until all of the enemies of their God are
burned to forgotten cinders.

This fire begets fire. I watched at the council
meeting. The younger ones among our kind are being caught up in
this blaze for war. A hatred and bloodlust is growing in them. I
fear what I see, and yet I know I must allow it to grow and
develop. We, my dear Terey, are the Old Guard. We must become young
again. We must support the changes taking place. What we are seeing
arise is a new creation - a creation that will save us from
ourselves and will finish, in its way, what was started so long
ago. I believe we are witnessing the birth of the new Dragons.

With the deepest of affection,

Your sister and loving companion,

MihaiProiosAstron’

Lovingly folding her letter, written on
finest of linen paper and slipping it into an envelope made from
that same paper, her hands having carefully crafted it, Mihai sat
back, sighing. Now for the wax seal… Everything must be perfect for
a most loving companion. Lifting a burning, flaxen candle made from
the comb of the hoarfrost bee, Mihai tilted it so that several
drops of the melted wax fell upon the envelope’s closed leaf,
instantly beginning to congeal. Quickly placing the candle back on
her writing desk, she picked up her signet ring, pressing it into
the hardening crimson wax, securing her seal upon it.

Blowing out the candle and picking up the
letter, Mihai stepped from her tiny officer’s cabin into the long,
shadowy companionway of the imperial frigate, DishonPele. All navy
ships ran on Palace Time. It now being late evening according to
that time, the ship was darkened as though it were traveling in the
blackness of night. The woman laughed to herself. Here she was
hundreds or possibly thousands of light years from EdenEsonbar, on
course for a distant star system in the neutral zone far beyond the
eastern territories that, itself, was many light years yet away,
and she was walking toward the baggage room to hand deliver a
letter that was to be transported by fast packet and then hand
delivered to her dear companion, Terey, when, instead, she could go
to the communications room to send her message out, it being
received possibly in a day or even less.

(Author’s note: ‘
Light year’ was a
terminology used once by the Ancients long before Mihai’s birth,
and now only spoken about in the books of adventure and tales
.
The study of what is now referred to as ‘
neutrino
transfusing cyclotronics’
, the first fundamental building
block of mathematical theory known as ‘EbenCeruboam NTC’, as
neutrino transfusing cyclotronics was often referenced, proposed
that, since matter and energy were one and the same, then energy
and energy were one and the same. Thus all things pertaining to
energy – gravity, time, space, and location (distance) were also
one and the same, given that all things came from one unified
source energy (oneness) and had been split – as though through a
spectrum – to become many different things. So, one need only
transfuse the desired thing back through the spectrum, returning it
to its true being and then convert it again into something
different by passing it back through the spectrum at a different
moment of angle and poof!… the laws surrounding that particular
form of energy could be circumvented to achieve the intended
goal.

The practiced study of NTC led to the
development of navigation systems able to read the stars, i.e.
change the energy fields surrounding a space transport into
non-readable forms of energy, thus allowing the transport to
operate outside common universal laws. With implementation of this
theory, jumping nearby star systems soon became practical. Later,
with the discovery of jump portals, along with advanced NTC
technology, distant ranges within the galaxy also became reachable,
opening up the universe to Lowenah’s ever-inquisitive children.

This was ancient history by Mihai’s day, being part
of the discoveries made by the children early in the First
Age.)

Mihai shrugged. This seemed to be the way
with everything. Her people just could not let go of the old to
embrace the new. Well, why should they? For example, the horse had
become not only one of the children’s most precious tools, but also
closest of animal companions. Long-lived hybrids of seventy or
eighty years were now common, they being used to this day in every
form of service from giant draft animals to fine, prancing, riding
mounts. Even now, nearly every navy ship, be it cutter to carrier,
was equipped with stables for the safe transportation of
horses.

Regarding crafts of war, her people were no
different. Solid projectile and energy weapons abounded, with even
more advanced designs awaiting life, sitting upon the draftsmen’s
tables. Even now, the children charged into battle with sword and
axe and, oh yes, bow and arrow. While scientific application had
lifted many of these weapons up to the status of technical marvels,
such as the derker blade and jillson bolt, even those inventions
were ancient long before the Great War. The lanner, a contrivance
of villainy born in Mihai’s mind, was only a more efficient and
compact version of handheld energy weapons in use for many
millenniums.

Mihai puzzled over why her people were so absorbed
with such foolishness. It had cost them battles at times and so
many squandered lives. She shuddered as a chill ran down her back,
thinking of countless, fruitless assaults made by brave warriors
charging into the jaws of certain death, wielding little more than
sword and shield. Why did they do it, still do it?

Glancing down at her hand holding the letter, Mihai
sadly smiled, remembering. Food, clothing, and shelter were
necessities needed to keep the flesh alive. All other things were
to sustain soul and spirit. Acquiring needs for the flesh was
animalistic, all creatures seeking such a reward. But for the
children of the Maker of Worlds, the human heart must be satisfied
above all other desires. Without that desire fulfilled, life of the
flesh would have no meaning.

The letter Mihai was delivering to her sister and
companion was not merely some compressed flaxen fiber sprinkled
with a little ink. No, it was a small piece of her soul being
delivered to someone she loved dearly, a gift that could be held
close to the heart on those lonely nights when little hope remained
in a dark and troublesome world. It was spirit food, something as
important to the survival of her people as were all the grain
fields and orchards within the universe. It was this longing for
the spirit foods that made them human, but it also threatened their
very existence.

The enemy long ago threw away this nostalgic spirit
of the heart, replacing it with a vision of a new world ruled over
by their supreme god, Asotos. His promise was one of deliverance
into a world of new enlightenment and understanding, one where ‘all
people could attain to the immortality denied them by the
wicked
usurper
holding captive the secret powers hidden deep within
the confines of the Palace’. First must come success in war - the
defeat of the Witch Mother and her
misguided urchins
, then
would come the revival of the spirit to a new and unimagined level
of theosophical glory.

Privations forced upon the people of Asotos’ kingdom
did not weaken their resolve, at least for those who accepted as
truth the religion preached by the Worm and his priests. The
future! The future! Their reward was always in the future. The
spirit would be made fat with satisfaction sometime in the future,
but first must come sacrifice to attain that future. For the enemy,
the coming reward replaced the spirit food from the past that was
still so cherished by the children of Lowenah, she who had not
offered empty promises, saying instead there were no guarantees,
and that fate rested upon choices made.

Mihai pondered these two opposing ideologies as she
slowly made her way toward the baggage room. Who really were the
children of these upper realms? For countless ages, the children
lavished upon themselves every form of selfish pleasure imagined,
having no guilt, not fearing any divine retribution other than say
a dizzying, sickly hangover, or possible bruise or broken bone.
Life had been delivered up as each one chose it, without
consideration of the future or consequences. At least that was the
way Mihai saw it in her heart.

Now her world was filled with loss and guilt - loss
of innocence, of companions, of beauty and art, of certainty, of
everything that made up what her life had always been about. From
that fateful day Asotos tore her body and soul asunder down to this
hour, Mihai’s world was filled with uncertainty, doubt and guilt.
Yes, guilt…guilt for allowing the evil man into her heart, guilt
for living while so many of her lovers and companions had not,
guilt for wishing for the pleasantries of the past while not
wanting the hidden realities of the future. She fought these wars,
led Lowenah’s children into the depths of Hell, indeed, sacrificed
all things in her life, not for a new future, but for a hopeful
return to the past. Oh, to forget all the evil and return to the
days of innocence!

And yes, as the woman sighed, there was also this
guilt for a growing numbness of feeling nothing… pain, love, hate,
passion…whatever feeling that made her human. The war, the war…it
had drained her strength and her peoples’. Six millennia of rape,
wanton murder and torture had changed them…her. Drinking to forget
was common, many of the army’s best having resigned themselves to
the bottle for courage and valor, and no one seemed to care, other
than a few stuffed shirts at the councils. Even Mihai managed to
turn a blind eye to the suffering, at times finding herself
surrounded by the gore and misery of battle, thinking only of the
temporal victory won and not the destruction of so many of her
companions.

Mihai shook away her bad visions, lamenting
silently. If this warring lasted much longer, would her soul even
continue to exist? Or might she, too, become little more than the
animalistic creatures that seek at all cost only the protection of
the flesh, hiding from the day to utter in the darkness amoral
platitudes of hunger and desire without having care for even like
of kind, to preserve her flesh alive to satisfy only her prurient
desires, giving no consideration to the welfare of friend or
lover?