Is that a Phoenix!?!

Naawwww it's just Tytos Skyfire burning up the sky again.

Tytos gasped for air as he leaned against a tree, exhaustion creeping up on him like a silent murderer. 

It had been a long run. He’d used magic to extend his endurance, but had run out of power some time ago, and was relying on good ol’ panic to keep going. But now his nervous system was crashing, and all he could think about was sleep - and the fact that he wasn’t going to get any. 

Distant howls reminded him of why he was running. He looked around nervously, hoping he wouldn’t see anything, and successfully failed to see anything. This only fed his anxiety - any good living wizard has a healthy dose of paranoid self-preservation. 

Believing that everyone is out to get you isn’t a delusion - when it’s true. At that point, it’s just a healthy acknowledgement of reality. As a wizard of the Celestial College, and a conscripted Battle-mage in the Rundellian army, you have plenty of evidence that everyone is trying to kill you.

Not that Tytos blamed them. 

Well he did. 

But he was smart enough to acknowledge that killing him was a good play. 

So the game went on.

He felt his sentinel ward trigger. He leapt to the side, shouting his confusing wizard babble. Which, of course, was a highly refined series of magical linguistic commands to create something solid from something imaginary. A bright purple and blue sphere of energy engulfed him. A second later, multiple arrows slammed into the sphere of energy, along with a streak of silver blue lightning from a nearby tree covered hilltop. 

His sphere exploded with the overwhelming force of the combined fire, and he was sent sprawling into a bush. 

“Av thors hårete baller!” he cursed, dragging himself out the back side of the bush. Feeling a new wind of panic fuelling his flight, his footsteps pounded into the soft forest earth as he ran for his life. The Aes Sidhe had been stalking him for most of a day now, and had finally caught up. He waved his staff in the air, and spoke the words of power for speed. Energy coalesced around his feet, creating glowing auras and runes of faint yellow and red, pulsing with a rhythm of three beats per second. 

The land around him blurred as he ran, his physical speed increasing to superhuman levels. He would pay the price of running like this later - but he needed to survive first. Running in the early evening with glowing magical feet, was sure to draw attention! 

A bolt of fire zipped by him and slammed into the ground beside him. The slowly expanding circle of flames closed in on him, he gulped and leaned into running full speed. Debris and fire caught the edges of his clothing, but the growing circle of force barely affected him, as he fled its epicentre. 

Several more flaming bolts followed the first, but they weren’t as well aimed. Trees exploded around him, showering him with pine needles, dirt and uncomfortably sharp wood shards.

His sentinel ward had been clanging non-stop for the last two minutes, but he sensed a lower level pulse in addition to the general alarm. He looked around wildly, always returning his gaze  to where he was going, so he didn’t slam into a tree at super speed. Magic doesn’t automatically negate physics, and more than one wizard had killed themselves by running into a tree at 60 miles per hour. Tytos was a survivor first, and a wizard second. 

He came to a gorge in the forest and went for the jump. Momentum being what it is, he flew over the gorge and onto the opposite side of the unfortunately placed chasm. His speed enchantment had been enhanced with anti-gravitational buffering, for just such occasions - he flew through the air like a glowing rock launched from a ballista. 

He hit the ground softly on the other side, and an explosion erupted far too close to avoid - like it’d been waiting for him. His shield wasn’t up; he could only concentrate on one enchantment at a time. Pain and fire ripped through his body, and he was sent flying. His speed enchantment worked against him, as the anti-gravitational buffering denied gravity to resist his unwilling ascent.

He flew like a home run ball at the annual college softball tourney. 

Pain clouded his mind and he let his enchantment drop away. Exhaustion flooded his lower body and  the consequence of moving his legs at silly speed caught up. 

Flying through the air, he waved his staff and into the darkness of the sky, he disappeared. In his place was a bird, resembling the Falco Columbarius. More commonly known as “The Merlin.”

Tytos, now a merlin bird, tucked into a dive to get out of the sky as quickly as possible. He was, at best, a mediocre flyer and the skies were extremely dangerous for metamorphosed human wizards. 

Sure enough, cries from the nearby crows, hawks and eagles could be heard all around him, as the Sidhe Aerial core communicated the presence of a transformed wizard. Tytos let out a string of expletives in the merlin’s native tongue. Some languages don’t curse well, and the bird tongue is often one of them. The merlin’s in particular - it sounded surprisingly beautiful. 

But a language is a language, so Tytos spoke three words of power. A huge ball of flaming white light erupted from his wings and shot into the sky like an ascending comet. It was blinding, but thankfully, he was flying away from it. So that didn’t bother him.

The Eagles however, who were descending upon him, hated it. Their cries of rage and fury gave him small satisfaction,  he knew his time was short. He focused. Merlin eyes are very good. 

He could see them in the distance. Blue lights in the sky pulsing and drawing closer to his position. They’d spotted his flare and were coming.

He dived towards the ground, hoping to get out of the light and into the semi-darkness of the forest. Light beams collided with the trees and mists below, creating a surrealistic visage. It lit up the surroundings like a ghostly halo that could be seen from every point in the valley. He expected he was now the centre of everyone’s attention.

Tytos the merlin disappeared into the forest, flying through the trees at a reckless speed. He hoped the eagles would be blind long enough for him to get to safety. Branches and leaves slapped him in his bird face and wings as he flew, but he kept up his heedless pace. To slow down was to die. 

The eagles pursued him into the forest, shrieking rudely, calling him things like ‘broke wing’, ‘dull talon’ and even more rudely, ‘fat domesticated pigeon.’ He didn’t spend all day every day flying, so he knew he wasn’t as good as they were. They didn’t need to be such assholes though!

He broke out of the tree-line and into the sky, after nearly colliding with an inconveniently placed tree. The eagles were right behind him. 

As he ascended into the sky, he could see them, the Red Riders coming to rescue him. But he was too far away. The eagles were going to catch him. So he did what he knew he shouldn’t. 

“Aaaayyyyyy Yuhhhh yuhhhhh yuuhhhhhh,” he screeched out in merlin. Which when translated were the words of power he used to manifest his speed enchantment. His wings erupted in red - yellow light, he felt time slow down, and he accelerated. 

But rather than let his metamorphosis spell drop, he held it, concentrating on two spells at once. His mind immediately split and his sharp merlin’s eyes rolled back as a migraine came slamming in. He exploded with speed and left the eagles behind, racing towards his allies. 

They told him later that he came at them like a flaming Phoenix. They were terrified that the Sidhe had found a bird-god to fight them. But, as he approached, they could tell from his aura that he was a Rundellian. This was confirmed as he abruptly transformed back into a human, his magic failing him, and then plummeted out of the sky. 

“It’s always painful holding two spells at once for the first time,” Captain Daleannah Hood comforted him, laid up in the field hospital bed. “You either have a stroke, die, or you’re changed forever. You’re not drooling, so it’s probably the latter. Good for you.” 

Daleannah had caught him as he fell, while the Red Riders laid waste to the forest with fire magics. She patted him on the shoulder and left him to rest. 

So he did what all soldiers do when given the rare opportunity – sleep.

He dreamt of the wind, clouds, and extraordinary bright lights.