In Hiding

Another story based on Fyrethil and the Shetheka

"What does this have to do with anything, Fyre?" Pyth stood with his arms folded across his chest like a mother who was upset with her child. "Why are you telling me about Khana instead of the Shetheka like I asked?" Fyre looked at his younger brother with a look of sincerity, not at all shocked at the sternness in his kin's voice. He then shook his head and smiled. "Because Khana is directly linked to the war with the Shetheka. She's a target, Pyth. They've been after her so that they can affect my morale." Pyth was silent for a moment as he considered what Fyrethil was telling him. It was certainly possible, the Shetheka were very resourcefull in that they could figure things out about a person without even trying too hard. They were masters at getting information on their enemies, no matter how powerful they are.  Fyrelipyth then nodded and sighed. "So, you're telling me that they're trying to get to your heart in order to bring you down easier?" "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, Pyth. Don't you get it? If you attack someone's heart, their emotions get in the way. When in battle, emotions can blind you, making you extremely vulnerable to the enemies attacks." "Of course I know, it's happened to me plenty of times in the past. We've fought together a lot, and everytime you are severely wounded, knocked unconscious, killed, or whatever, I get angry, and my emotions begin to run me." Fyre nodded and took a sip from the glass he was holding in his hand. "See? It happens to all of us, but I give you my word that even if Khana comes to harm, I won't let my emotions run me like some human." Pyth winced at that last statement. "Come now, I've never heard you disrespect humans like that before...why the sudden a*****e attitude?" His brother merely shook his head and sighed. "Face it, we're different from humans, they're weaker than us, it's a fact. One that you'll have to live with..." "...Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they're weaker than we are. We're immortals, we live, and live, and live, and live and when we die we come back to life unless we're soul broken. Humans have one chance at life, and one chance only." "Not necessarily, I've known humans to come back to life before." "Yeah, as homunculi!" Pyth countered, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Fyre set his glass down. "Alright, we're getting off track now. I know that I've ended up walking the path of my destiny anyway, even after my protests and the destruction of the High Council of the Gods...I get it...I'm going to do it anyway, but after that, I'm done doing all the Gods' dirty work." Pyth only sighed and looked his brother in the eyes, not wanting to deter him away from his ideas, but at the same time thinking them as being ludicrous. "Fyrethil...I remember...when we were younger, teenagers...back in the early days...when the homelands were at their most beautiful appearance. You would gladly give up the life you lead just to live a life in the service of the gods..." Fyrethil was silent, his head hung, and his wings drooping as he stared at the ground. It was true, when he was young, he'd wanted to serve the gods with his every limb and movement. "Those days are gone...and so is the Fyrethil you knew back then...That was before I realized how corrupted the Gods really were, that was before I even dreamed of having a family, before I truly had one. But the Gods put everything I loved in their own hands, threatening to crush it should I not answer their call. I did it to save Phiren and my children, not for them..." "But even if you aren't doing it for the Gods...the war against the Shetheka would be a great victory, and you wouldn't have to worry about being hunted by anything other than normal humans any longer." "I don't like harming humans...but some are greedy, and when they get on my nerves I lose control of my anger. That's what phoenixes are known for...their temper." Pyth once again shook his head, folding his arms across his chest. "It reflects upon us badly...it's not an image we all like..." Fyrethil nodded in agreement at that statement. "That's very true...but still...it is a flaw..." "All races have flaws." "Not all races are as deadly as we are when it comes to those flaws, however." "You couldn't be more right about that," Pyth muttered under his breath. Fyrethil looked up at him, his eyes narrowed and now his arms folded across his chest. "I heard that...what are you implying? That I'll start killing innocents if I can't get control of my anger?" "No, no, that's not what I'm implying at all...I'm not implying anything...How can I? I already know you inside and out...I know how you work, how your emotions bounce about like a confused dog." "Heh..." For a moment they were both silent, standing there as a warm wind blew across the field. Fyrethil took a moment then to think about how he was going to solve the problem of Khana being a target. What did they want to do with her? Kill her. Of course, that was it. They would attack her in order to get to him, wounding his heart to draw him out of hiding and making him an easier target than he already was. Fyre would give his life for Khana at any given time, he knew that he could just come back to life. It was all a matter of losing his heart....should Khana die, his heart would die with her. Damn...This is all too risky, and all too irritating. What if I can't get to her in time? What if the Shetheka make it to her before I do one of these days? I have to make a stand and end their vile race once and for all, even if they are our brother race... It was true. The Shetheka and the Xelthians were once the same race, but once certain prejudices sprang from the separation of beliefs, the Xelthians decided to exile the Shetheka. Then a war was born, two races, once one in the same, were at each others' throats. Killing, sabotage, betrayal, and stealth were the tactics that sprang first, and then came the full scale warfare. The battles began to get larger and larger, until finally, entire armies were called to fight against one another. The bloodshed increased, and the three princes, Fyrethil, Fyrellithil, and Fyrelipyth, became targets, the royalty they were could not help them one bit. "Fyrethil?" "Oh, sorry, I guess I was just spacing out a bit." He then looked to the sky and then back at his brother, shaking his head slightly. "I think we should get out of here, we've already been detected by the Shetheka...in less than a half hour this place will be busting at the seams with our enemy." "I agree, we should disappear." Without another word the two brothers disappeared from the area in a burst of flames, nowhere to be found in the vicinity. It was only five minutes later that the army that was after them arrived, disappointed to find that the two brothers had already left the area. * * * "This is stupid, Kathka..." Pyth muttered as he and the eldest of the three brothers sat in a dimly lit cave somehwere in the Phoenician Homelands. "I don't see why we're sitting in here hiding, there's only two hundred of them out there, we can take them." "We're hiding because there's a commander with them, and he happens to be an elite, if he corners one of us, we're dead." "Most of the commanders are weak though...unless it's...Oh no..." "Yeah...Hylendreth is out there...and he looks like he's quite annoyed with us at this point." Kathka was looking out of a crack in the wall, the light only covering a small area of his face around his eye. An army of two hundred Shetheka had cornered them in the area, picking up their thoughts because they were unshielded. Quicky and efficiently, they had shielded their minds and decided to seek refuge in the caves. "This isn't good...Hylendreth is a match even for Fyrethil..." "No one can defeat Fyrethil...his power is terrifying...with one blast he can destroy this planet. If he were to lose control of his power, he could create a rift in space and time...and destroy us all..." Pyth suddenly wore a look of pure fear on his face, he was absolutely flabbergasted. "H-he can't be THAT powerful...can he?" "I'm afraid so...if he were to really lose his temper...it would mean the end for all of us." Pyth was silent for a few moments, contemplating what he could do to stop such a situation if one should arise. It took a lot to make Fyrethil truly angry, it was nearly impossible to get him destructively angry. The only one who had been able to coax an anger even close to that out of him was Shadow. He still cringes everytime anyone even MENTIONS his name. Shadow was a bad itch, and we were even beginning to think that there was no cure for it. It seems that things just fell into place. Dark was the center of it all, too. That had been a bitter time in all three of their lives. Fyre, Kathka, and himself had even ended up waging a private war against Shadow and his lackeys Tousamame and Atimus. In the end, Atimus and Tous had made the ultimate betrayal, revealing that they had been leading the three brothers along the entire time. "Your thoughts are on Shadow and the others..." Kathka said suddenly, looking up at his brother with a worried expression on his face. "Do you still begrudge them for the hell they put you and Dark through?" Pyth shook his head. "How can I? What's done is done, they haven't shown up to challenge or torment us for the longest time now...it's been months since I've even heard of them from Dark...she doesn't like to talk about them at all." Kathka nodded slowly and in understanding. "Well, as long as you do not still have a grudge...grudges and prejudice poison the mind and make it weak...you must find the will to carry on and forget about the horrid things of the past." "Yeah, you're right...now what are we going to do about those Shetheka?" "I don't know, but I think these caves go deeper, I'm sure there's a whole system of them, maybe there's a way we can escape through another exit." The Shetheka outside suddenly froze and Hylendreth turned to look right at the cave. Go...Kathka...I'll follow, Pyth said into his elder brother's mind. Right...keep close, Kathka replied. Pyth only nodded and followed his brother down a nearby passageway, being careful not to make too much noise as he moved. The cave suddenly began to get smaller to the point where he had to hunch over slightly just to continue. Kathka was having a bit more difficulty due to the fact that he was a sturdy six foot three, while Pyth was only five foot eleven. It's going to get rather tight in here, so be sure your Other Sight is working. Right... Pyth replied and closed his eyes for a brief moment, activating his Other Sight. It acted much like night vision, seeing in places so dark that others without the power would not be able to see without some way of lighting their path. However, if either of them used their flame to aid their sight, the Shetheka would likely detect them and give chase. Damn, it's pitch black...I can seriously doubt that anything has ever lived in these caves. You might be wrong about that... Came Kathka's sickened reply. It was only a few seconds before Pyth realized what he was talking about. As he came up to Kathka's position, he saw a body, bloody, broken, and mummified leaning up against the wall of the cave. Skeletal phoenix wings protruded from its back. I think something deadly to phoenixes once lived in here...either that or this one was exposed to Thunderbird poison...I believe the latter is the correct answer...the only thing in the world I've seen do this to one of our kind was from the poison emitted from thunderbird orbs. Nothing else, no kind of power that could cause this kind of thing would work on our kind. Leaving the body be, they both came to the conclusion that it was, indeed, thunderbird poisoning that killed their fellow phoenix. Though how long the body had been in there was impossible to tell. The passageway remained the same relative size for quite sometime before it finally opened up into a large room. The cave's ceiling was at least twenty feet up and the "room" must have been around thirty square feet in size. "Geez...whoever created these caves must have made it a refuge of some type..." "Why do you say that, Kathka...?" Pyth paused for a moment. "...Oh..." As he looked around, at least ten Phoenixes came out of the shadows, and they weren't Shetheka. No. They were Xelthian...their kind. "Lord Fyrelipyth...Lord Fyrellithil?" The two brothers turned at the voice...that of a female, no doubt. "Veylasha!" They exclaimed simultaneously. Their cousin stepped forward, he long blue hair covering one eye, and one could actually see the damage through her hair. She had suffered grievous wounds, as had the rest of the phoenixes who had been hiding inside the cave. "What's going on here? What are you all doing in a place like this?" Kathka demanded. "We were ambushed by an army of thunderbirds...we managed to knock out several of them, but the poison from their orbs took most of us out. We now stand with only fifty of our original two hundred." "The others fell?" Veylasha only nodded slowly, her hair falling away from her eye, revealing a bloody mess. Though her eye could still open, the two brothers doubted that she could still see very well out of it. She no longer had whites because they were completely bloodshot, as if every vessel in there had burst. As they looked around, they could see that the extent of the others' injuries were much worse than her own. There were some missing limbs, some who were bandaged nearly completely, and others were passed out from their injuries. Pyth sighed and folded his arms across his chest. "Kathka, we should stay here with them, set up defenses and fortify this position just in case the Shetheka catch onto us." "There's a larger room just down that passageway, it's where those of us who are fit to fight and who are able to deal with their injuries spend most of our time. We leave someone in here to protect the wounded of course." Veylasha's words satisfied Kathka and Pyth and they set to work healing the ones that they could. "That's all we can do for now...the rest of them will have to do with non-magical healing...there's nothing we can do for those wounds..." Pyth said softly. "I wish Fyrethil were here...he'd be able to rid us of the Shetheka for now..." Veylasha looked up at him with some worry in her eyes. "Fyrethil was here, he set out to find some healing herbs for us...He should be back any minute." Pyth raised an eyebrow at that. "Really?" "Yes, really." Both of them turned to face the one who had just spoken, only to find Fyrethil standing in the "doorway" holding a linen bag in his hand, filled with herbs. He was bandaged as well, more so than most of the others. "Why are you bandaged?" "Because Hylendreth put a seal on my abilities, I'm barely more powerful than Kathka right now." "I didn't realize that he had the power to do that..." Fyrethil only nodded and sighed, setting his load down on the make-shift table that sat in the center of the room. Then he turned and looked Pyth square in the eyes. "Hylendreth is just as powerful as I am. He is extremely dangerous...mother gave the power to him." Pyth's eyes widened in shock and he stood there simply staring into his brother's face. Their own mother? Why would she give power to the enemy? This didn't make any kind of sense at all. There wasn't a thing in the world that Pyth could think of that would possibly cause their mother to make such a decision. "B-b-but...why?" "Pyth, there's something you and Kathka should both know. It's that our mother is the leader of the Shetheka. She was resurrected by them and corrupted by them. You know what Kathka did to our parents, and when you bring a phoenix back to life when he or she is soul broken...they come back twisted and evil." I can't believe this...it seems that everyone we once loved is turning against us, trying to kill us. This whole world has gone to hell, our whole race is going to crap because of this war. "I can't believe this..." "I know it's hard to take, but it's the truth."

Reviews

[Yaooooooo]

Very well written.
Feel free to send me a request when ever you like...
Thanks for sharing...
One!