The Claw of the Phoenix

Loosely set in “The Arc” Universe

Aoi, the great sorceress of Canton, had waited years for the moment to arrive. There were so many people that had to be positioned, so many false starts and failed landings that had to be documented and recovered from. She and her staff had lost heart multiple times along the way, abandoning the project at times to improve medicines or develop new mental health therapies. But at last the preparations were complete, and it was only to her to speak the incantation and end a thousand years of madness.

When she discovered the spell in an old rotting grimoire, its steps were so simple and its scope was so broad that Aoi believed it had to be a fabrication. “To heal the land and its people, carve the claw of a Phoenix into it over five connections of mind, body, or soul.”

But this was to be far easier said than done. The shape in the book was bent and bizarre. The incantation was written in a tonal script without the suggestion marks typical of modern work. And to make matters worse, there seemed to be a pattern required for the order and type of connection that was not documented anywhere. Her first few attempts on a small scale turned green fields brown and people to madness. But after time and trials, her intuition had been honed into the point of a spear. It was going to be her to save the world. She was sure of it.

Once she had the method working on a small scale, her marked cyclist traveled the entire continent in search of these connections, casting wide nets across villages towns and cities to look for fragments of their shared soul that the two of them were missing. It had taken eight years to find them all, the people for whom mutual understanding would overwhelm any sense of distance. And with each find there was a sense of joy and elation that shot through the three of them at the same time.

Now the pieces were assembled — she need only speak the words. The words that she had spoken so many times before that she would mutter them in her sleep. She had spent hours translating them, making sure that with each syllable she would get the intention right. It was time. The sun was setting, and she could feel the air begin to tingle slightly.

She rose from her chamber to her balcony, one step at a time, each with unyielding gravity. With her forefinger, she lightly touched the mark upon her neck. And in a language dead to and resurrected from time she began:

“That we are separated, we are one. That we are apart, we are together. And by the energy within us all, we will repair this land. And we will make well its people.”

At first nothing happened. No ripple of power, no flash of light. But there was a sense of something being satisfied. An old debt finally repaid.

And without another moment, it started to rain.