Sendriel of the Sands sat waiting for him in a space built to look like the expanse of space. Stars twinkled in the distance. Near her, a planet burst to life, growing greener even as Rafe looked at it. Then it dissipated, a very life-like illusion undone.

  “Birth and rebirth are worlds apart, I'm afraid,” the red-haired woman in front of him said to no one in particular.

  “Okay?” he said with a frown.

  Could she be unaware he was here? She seemed to be deep in a trance, probably meditating. Rafe had tried that once and he did not fancy himself a meditator by any means. He lacked that calmness they had. Maybe he'd get it as he grew older and wiser, although, wasn't he pretty old by now?

  “Hmmm? Fire, destruction, desolation. Such a perilous path you begin, young one.”

  Young one? Well, he supposed to a millions of years old entity he'd be pretty young, wouldn't he? And what was she saying about his path? Come to think of it, Grenderel had said something ominous too.

  “What are you—”

  “But that will not be all. Change. Hope. Peace. Hmmm? You will give a lot to the multiverse, and take from it too. Your fate burns brighter than a star gone supernova. Be ware what awaits you beyond my sanctum. Now, choose your gift.”

  That was…rude, uninformative, succinct. It was unbelievable is what it was.

  Then the feathers came. They were erect, shimmering, well preserved in enchanted vases. Their colours differentiated them though, but they all had that vague ethereal quality Rafe associated with the divine.

  His aura senses tingled. He wanted them all. He feared them all.

  Then he jolted as a thought occurred to him. He was the first person to ever pass Noid's trial. Grenderel had been forced to offer more gifts than he'd wanted. The phoenix though, had offered only a feather. And perhaps a glimpse into his fate? Only she had offered cryptic hints and dire warnings. Was she perhaps trying to cheat him out of a second reward?

  “You have to tell me more about my path.”

  Slowly, the woman opened her eyes. They were bushy, her lashes, like a smaller version of down feathers. Her pupils were large and fiery and hers looked like a gigantic chicken’s eyes. The rest of her was all too human though.

  “Pick a feather,” she said.

  He choked on a protest as he remembered Sam’s entreaties. He had to pick the oldest. He never would have thought to do that though. Not in a million years. He would have picked the one nearest him and happily gone with that. As it was, he had to look around for a long time, going past very interesting feathers in the meantime.

  There was a feather that gave off the distinct feel of metal. It was straighter than those around it, and its edges were silvery and when he went closer he caught a whiff of steel. It must have been some natural treasure he could use to forge a sword.

  He painfully left it behind. And left another that smelled like lavender and that his pores sang for. It must have been a body improvement feather. Improving his body just a little bit appealed to him. He needed to get some action in the companionship business.

  He left it. He was saddened.

  What he found was a mistake on so many levels, he wondered if Sam hadn't meant it that way. Maybe as revenge for beating her, humiliating her.

  It was red, it was old, it was mortal. It was a wilted flower compared to all the others. Sure, he could feel the magic emanating from it, but why did it look like the old feather of a chicken that had been slaughtered two nights ago? Its shaft was hardening, cracking. Its barbs were clumping in places, drying up in others, leaving bald patches on the shaft.

  Rafe was not sure he wanted to pick it. He was sure he would not have picked it in a thousand years.

  “Is this really the strongest one?” he queried the phoenix.

  A membrane - that was probably hidden under her eyelid - flicked over her eye in lieu of a blink. She said nothing.

  Rafe argued with himself. There were hundreds, no thousands, hundreds of thousands of better-looking feathers. Still, Sam wouldn't have lied to him. Would she?

  He picked the feather. Nothing happened. At least at first.

  “Huh? I kind of expected —”

  A bolt of lightning struck his body. Or at least it felt like it had. He couldn't control his body for an amount of time he couldn't determine.

  He found himself lying horizontally in the all-encompassing darkness as if he'd fallen, but there was no ground to fall to, only void.

  His mouth was wet. Like he had been frothing. His muscles were sore, frayed, like he'd run a marathon while doing burpees. He'd had a convulsion, was all he could decide.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  He did not have the feather anymore. The tattoo on his arms was bright, like a red firecracker

  It had eaten his feather! The librarian had eaten his damn feather.

  “Give it back, you damn bastard!”

  It could not. It was growing, rewriting itself. It could cover the length of both his arms now even before moving, and it was still growing.

  He heard a loud sigh, reminding him he was not alone in this place in the middle of nowhere.

  “The lost weapon is a part of you now, boy. I guarantee the feather shall still be able to perform the purpose whoever had you take it had in mind.”

  “Oh. And what is that purpose?”

  “Not one I will share. I will tell you that you are locked in now though. Enjoy the vehicle you have bought.”

  Then she closed her eyes and resumed her meditation, and however Rafe tried he could not wake her.

  He stayed there a while, healing and waiting for the damn parasite to finish its digestion. It stopped glowing, turned to a dark-ashy ink pattern resting along his arms, all over his chest and creeping up his neck. It looked kind of cool.

  He looked to the phoenix one more time but the woman looked at him not. He shrugged and went his way. To the last meeting, the one he'd been dreading.

  The enchantress. He'd seen her once, seen the centuries-old battle she'd effectively ended even as a mortal. He didn't understand half the things he'd seen then.

  What he did understand was that even though it wasn't hers, the enchantress had manipulated his trial. She'd manipulated the gifts he'd received. He was now sure Sam's fear of the enchantress having predicted the thief was right on the mark.

  What he found in the enchantress’s atrium confused him to no end. There was a broken and bloody woman, a girl really, fighting against…

  That was odd. Rafe was pretty sure he'd seen the being she was fighting before.

  The Demon God. Younger and without the universe-devastating power he'd gained when he fought Sendriel of the Sands. The little power he had was enough though.

  The enchantress wore soft leather armour fashioned like a witch's robe complete with thigh-hugging tights, a short battle skirt and pointy hat. She held her whip-like blade. Her prosthetic eye was shining.

  The demon god pulled a beam of what appeared to be arcane lightning from the sky. The enchantress rolled out of its way. It was insufficient and Rafe watched with rapt attention as the area the enchantress had been in seemed to erupt with destructive forces too myriad to comprehend.

  When the dark and dust settled, the enchantress remained amid a shimmering jade solid-crystal mana aegis that fully enclosed her like the shell of an egg.

  She was floating off the ground, staring at the bemused Demon God. Her whip had been replaced by a spellcaster's staff. She cast a spell.

  The Demon God charged and dodged the spell in one movement. He hit the aegis with his forearms, sending the enchantress flying and the aegis cracking.

  The forearms that had cracked the shell were burned and bloodied though. And the spell the demon had dodged. It hadn't been meant to kill it. It was a cantrip. A quagmire on the ground.

  The Demon God tried to move but his legs were caught. The demon opened his mouth, and Rafe saw it shift bizarrely to look bigger, like a drake's mouth.

  A beam of something abrasive and purple and brilliant shot toward the enchantress. Her phoenix eye gleamed. Her hands came up in a strange movement of practiced gestures.

  “Spell breaker!” she called, and the beam of violent violet froze.

  Then the fragment of reality around the beam broke like it was a mirror. He expected the demon to despair, but the creature just roared and continued to attack.

  The exchanges were fast and brutal. No one gave any quarter. No one withdrew even for a moment. Fights at the highest level were no easy thing.

  “And don't forget the aura. It can crush you like a bug if I let you feel it. If I let you feel the power that beam exuded even before it left the monster's mouth.”

  Rafe looked for where the voice was coming from. It was nowhere near him. Instead, directly across from where he watched the fight as a phantom, two phantoms stood and watched as well.

  “Monster, mistress?”

  “I know what I just said.”

  “But the demon race is… They are people too. If anyone had you say things like—”

  “They'd call me a racist, yes. It is a truth, however. The demons came from dungeons. They are the last recorded race to have evolved beyond the control of the cores.”

  “The last?” the girl next to the enchantress asked.

  “It was the beastkin before them. The dragons being the last among them. It is believed we came from dungeons and their ilk, too. We are made of essence after all. All of us.”

  “So we were…”

  “Monsters, yes.”

  The girl stopped talking for a time, watching the fight play out in front of them, dragging out. She lost patience almost the same moment Rafe did.

  “Why did you want to show me this mistress?”

  “You are a very patient girl. I did not want to show you this. Rather this is not all I wanted to show you.”

  She snapped a finger and the scene flashed forward. The enchantress stood and the demon did not. It lay battered and broken and irrevocably dead. The young enchantress stepped over its body. She'd lost her phoenix eye sometime when Rafe wasn't looking, and her trailing leg had been crushed, flattened like a pancake. One arm had been torn clean off.

  Still, she moved to a distortion of light that had appeared when the demon fell. She dragged herself there, bleeding and broken as she was. Rafe was sure she wouldn't have gotten up if she allowed herself to fall.

  She touched the distortion, something ethereal slithered up her hand. Its jade purple colour was just a pinch compared to the darkness.

  “A mantle?” Rafe breathed.

  No. Not just a mantle. The mantle. The one she'd got after defeating the Demon God in her legacy vision. The vision of a future that had been erased.

  Even the young enchantress was surprised when a vision, a prophetic vision, played out in front of her.

  When guardian-level entities fought, star maps were redrawn. Not on this occasion though. The galaxy they fought in would fall, then rise again in the next instant as immortal fate and immutable destruction faced off at the highest tier. They overdrew on the fabric of reality, destroying it and healing it in the next instant.

  The phoenix and Demon God would eventually tire the fabric of reality. A hole in reality would suck out some essence, the life of the universe. And through that hole, they'd come. The calamity is all Rafe could think to call it. The guardians would be outnumbered. They would fall, having caused their own downfall.

  Then the universe core would be snuffed out.

  The last of the essence - a minuscule amount - runs to avoid its natural enemy, to avoid the approaching calamity that would snuff it out. And then it finds a new place. One where the fuel is ripe. It starts to burn, a flame Rafe had seen once in a vision when the enchantress took the Demon God's head. The first flame, the flame of origin. The primordial flame that will birth life anew.