_ _ _3rd Person POV_ _ _
As hate bloomed within an immortal soul that had never felt such an emotion, things did not slow down. The fighting did not stop; the orc horde did not pause in their advance for even a moment. But all of that was soon to change, as hate can be quite the explosive catalyst.
It began when the ground started to shake, beginning as a small tremor, but rapidly escalating into something far more violent. It was not long in fact until cracks began to tear open, splitting the earth apart as a flickering orange glow radiated from within. Those unlucky enough to fall, their bodies unable to react before the earth opened up beneath them, did not last long. Their screams were cut off when their bodies were abruptly incinerated as burning hot waves of fire erupted from deep below, pouring up onto the surface with an ear-piercing explosion of force.
For a moment, the flames expanded outwards, rolling across the landscape like a raging tsunami and blanketing the area with blazing light. Those who were not quick enough to back away were overtaken, disappearing into the incoming wave, never to be seen again. A second later, however, the flames pulled back, or, more accurately, something pulled them back.
They poured backwards towards the epicentre of the eruption, swirling and dancing as they began to spiral upwards. Streams of fire snaked through the air before joining with the larger whole. And so, second by second, more and more was added until all could see it: the spiralling pillar of raging red, orange, and yellow that pierced the clouds.
The hordes of surrounding orcs that found themselves too close were swept up in the violent torrent, their bodies being dragged upwards, unable to resist. The lucky ones were vaporised instantly, their forms turning to dust as they were dragged into the spiralling tower of flames. The unlucky ones, however, were met with a far slower fate, their fur and flesh catching ablaze as they were agonisingly cooked alive in their own armour.
These orcs, the ones whose charred corpses managed to escape the vortex's pull, were sent crashing back down to the ground, their mangled bodies smashing into either the mud and dirt or their own kin. Of course, some that managed to escape the pull were still very much alive; however, that did not last long. In the end, their lives were silenced when they were dropped several hundred feet, their forms crumbling as they splattered against the earth.
Despite all of this though, despite the death the eruption had caused, the thing that had truly pulled everyone's attention was the growing silhouette in the centre of the raging inferno. It started as a tiny, dark shape that rapidly began to grow and change, swelling into a gigantic black sphere hidden only by the blazing flames that surrounded it. The sight left the whole battlefield temporarily smothered in a deep, haunting silence, a silence that no one seemed willing to break.
_ _ _Orc General POV_ _ _
I had always been loyal to my people who suffered in the barren waste of our homeland; and I had always been loyal to my king, the one who had saved me from a fate far worse than death. I had been taken, bound and enslaved, forced to fight for entertainment like a rabid animal driven mad by the laughter and mockery of its captors. It was only when he arrived that I was finally freed; of course, the scars remained.
I tried to use my power, the power I had gained through my suffering, to help my king and my people, but such efforts were fruitless no matter how hard I tried. After all, the power that had been birthed within me could only bring suffering; it could not satiate the hunger that threatened to consume all of my kind.
So… when the king returned from his desperate and seemingly suicidal journey, driven by a new power of his own, I had been one of the first to march alongside him to unite our people. I had some misgivings, mind you; I knew that we were in actuality being used as pawns for some greater scheme, but such thoughts vanished under the influence of the orc lord. And they were even further silenced as the march on the great forest began, a journey that would lead to the flesh of our own kin reaching my maw far more than enough times to have sickened me under normal circumstances. But then again, the effects of Starved were quite potent, to say the least.
Either way, though, it didn't take long before we reached the Great Forest of Jura, and initially, things went well. The armour and weapons we obtained from our ally, Lord Gelmud, and his demon lord master had greatly assisted in the annihilation of the ogre village we passed through, as well as whatever unfortunate beasts of the forest that we had encountered.
There were many races within the forest that we had thought to consume, to devour so that we might add their strength to our own. Honestly, I had thought the lizardmen would crumble beneath us just like the ogres had, and it was looking as if that was exactly what was going to happen. We were slowly surrounding them as they struggled pointlessly against the inevitable. It should have ended with their flesh fueling our insatiable hunger, but fate can be a fickle thing.
The fact that I was lying with my back against the squelching earth with horrific burns all across my body was more than enough evidence that something had gone terribly wrong. First, black fire began annihilating large sections of our forces; then, dark lightning rained from the sky along with spiraling tornadoes of wind; and finally, acidic rains poured from the clouds, melting through all it touched. And everything had only escalated further when I had encountered her.
I had initially wanted to seek out and destroy the ones who were creating those domes of black flames, as well as the violent storm and that cursed acid rain, but things did not go as I had hoped. Instead of finding the perpetrators, I found my brethren being massacred by a small girl wielding a scythe and wearing a mask. She was strong, yet I could feel no aura from her, so we fought, and I used my power, hoping to make an opening so that I could finish her swiftly. Once again, however, things did not go as I had expected…
In the end, the initial explosion had blasted me backwards quite some distance; it had actually been the thing that had inadvertently saved my life from a death that should have been a guarantee. In fact, even with my resistance to fire, which admittedly did somewhat help me survive said explosion, I would not have stood much of a chance if I was forced to face such catastrophic heat continuously.
Still, the idea that I had managed to survive, even with such excruciating damage, was a miracle plain and simple. And yet, despite this fact, as my eyes turned upwards, and as the flames began to dissipate, the thought that I might survive what was to come simply did not exist within my mind.
My irises reflected what followed as the moonlight illuminated the scene before us all. A sphere, one of midnight black and of shimmering gold, unfolded into something that should have been a myth. Wings easily seventy meters in width extended, tails of fluttering feathers unraveled, and metallic talons of golden gleam grasped at the air. For a moment the world became still, and then its sharpened beak opened wide.
The deafening screech that followed, one that shook the very air and seemed to vibrate down to my very bones, signalled the end. And those blazing red eyes that peered down at the land below with such hatred and malice filled me with a feeling of dread that completely overwhelmed even the effects of Starved.
(((A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews and powerstones, please, if you would be so kind. As for Suu's phoenix form, it's a mixture of the two images that are listed below.
Images…)))