Disclaimer and Notes: Kid Icarus: Uprising - Nintendo, Sakurai, etc. own it. I do not. Pathetic fanwork is pathetic fanwork. I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a while… recently replayed the Wish Seed chapter. Decided there needs to be more stories in this section about non-main characters. I've had a lot of fun doing stuff like this for the Zelda section – I've written for Batreaux, for Random Castle Town Soldier, and the like.
I felt almost as bad having to kill the Phoenix as I did killing Colossi in another favorite game. In fact, the Phoenix's character design reminds me a bit of the Fifth Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus. The poor thing was just doing its job / defending its territory.
THE PHOENIX'S WISH
He was as old as the Earth and the Sky – or, at least, he was there to see the origins of the minds of mortal creatures able to perceive and wonder about the mysteries of such things. He was probably at least as old as the gods, though the Phoenix had forgotten his true age. He was not a bird that moved in memories, nor did he have a specific gender in the matter of creatures that used genders, though most stories referred to him as a male. The legendary animal was fledged in fire and spread his great wings over the hot places of the world.
The Phoenix once flew free over the entire world. After the primordial Earth cooled, he took to the deserts and to the lava-oozing mountains. After humans appeared, he watched as fire was stolen from the gods on their behalf. Some did try to hunt him, with a goal to steal his blood to gain eternal life, eternal youth. Such impudent warriors were burnt to ash. The Phoenix, himself, did not consider this a terrible fate, for he had been burnt to ashes time and time again before the cries of the first human infant had ever pierced the wind.
They feared death – the mortals… at least those mortal creatures with minds and souls enough to contemplate the prospect, which, for them, was inevitability. The Phoenix silently observed that it took quite a lot for them to choose death. All mortal creatures had an instinct to avoid it. Even the sick and the elderly – from the smallest spent sparrow to the bold, roaring old toothless lions - they fought to stay alive for as long as they could. It took a lot of pain of the soul for them to take another path, or something greater to believe in. For some, it took giving their hearts to king and country. For others, it took a fear of what their king and country would do to those they loved if they did not choose to go against their instincts. The Phoenix may have thought it noble how easily some of them would give the only life they knew for great principles, for the freedom and rights of others that they would never experience themselves. That is, the Phoenix would have thought it noble if the Phoenix thought in such essentially human terms.
Or godly terms. Some of the gods respected things like nobility – at least, if said nobility benefited them in some way. The immortal bird knew that the Goddess of Light, at least, liked human concepts of loyalty enough to instill it into the servants she created for herself.
The Phoenix served no one and he was not afraid to die. He experienced death time and again. Every century or so, he'd feel wear in his body and start gathering dry sticks to build himself a mighty nest atop a tall mountain. He'd rest upon it and set it on fire. Humans considered burning to death one of the most horrible ways to day and angels greatly feared fire catching their wings. To the Phoenix, it was but a trifle. He'd feel himself slipping away, falling asleep in fire. What was left in the pile of ashes was a single egg.
Now, the Goddess of Light once mentioned how divine omelets made from Phoenix-eggs are. Unless the Phoenix belonged to an entire species he'd forgotten about over the centuries, Lady Palutena is a liar. As far as the Phoenix knew, there was only one Phoenix-egg at any given time in the world – his egg, which was too hot for even her to touch. He would cease to be if she'd ever cracked his egg, which she never did – even though he wouldn't have minded.
What the mortals who hunted him did not know was how jealous the Phoenix was of them. He was a cosmic creature, bound to the earth via a physical form. The bird longed to fly free as a spirit among the stars. Even if he went to the Underworld, it would be a change of setting. The idea of reincarnation appealed to him, for it would be a change, something different from the constant regeneration. Through the ages, the Phoenix was always the same. Though he did not cherish memories, he had them all the same – enough of them for a continual, unchanging existence to bore him.
Witnessing the mortals, he found that they achieved immortality in interesting little ways. The humans were inventive beings, creating things that subsequent generations benefited from and remembered specific individuals for creating. Moreover, they created subsequent generations. The Phoenix would soar over the fields, watching mother deer and their fawns, bears and their cubs… he'd roost in secret outside the cities and watch humans taking delight in their children and in their grandchildren.
It was not long – at least in terms of a Phoenix's endless life – before he longed for this kind of immortality.
As he burnt down in his last fire and dreamed within the shell of his egg of flying free among the countless stars and dimensions, a voice whispered to him. It was deep and dark and he recognized it as the voice of one of the gods.
He, obviously, had never had cause before to deal with Hades.
"I have witnessed your suffering," the voice told him. "I have a solution. Oh, you are wondering why you should trust me, the Lord of the Dead? You long for the kind of change I can bring you, do you not? See me after you hatch, little birdy."
After the Phoenix hatched in his glory, he sought out the God of the Underworld at one of the dimensional cracks. The god projected his image before the mighty bird and lowered a long fingernail, presenting the creature with a strange object. The Phoenix looked up at him, incredulously.
"Relax, my pretty little bantam rooster…" Hades said, "This is the answer to all of your troubles. This is an egg. If you take care of it well and put all of your wishes into it, in one-hundred years time, it will hatch into a chick… one who can take your place. Think of it. You can fly free."
The bird looked up with a screech and a huffy flap of its enormous wings.
"What's in it for me, you ask?" the death-god replied. "Oh, everything. I do love collecting rare souls. The souls of immortal creatures are the rarest of all. I don't expect that I shall ever snag a unicorn, though I have procured a few angels. Delicious! I'd very much love to have you patrolling my halls, keeping my souls in line with your formidable strength. It is a change of scenery that you long for, after all. By scratching your feathers, I am helping myself, I assure you."
The Phoenix nuzzled the egg with his beak, showing his acceptance. As long as a god was serving themselves, perhaps they could be trusted.
"Take this egg to a high, hot mountain," Hades instructed. "I know one with an old temple you could use. Give it your care and your love. By doing so, you shall free yourself from your vicious cycle. The price is your soul, but that is not too high a price to pay for a cute little child, am I right?"
The legend of the Wish Seed was born. The Phoenix took care of the Seed, guarding it carefully from all dangers. The bird loved its treasure, becoming its true parent.
When stories circulated of this, at first, the true tale was told: That the Wish Seed was the Phoenix's Wish… the creature's attempt to break its cycle of immortality by creating progeny. After a while, however, like most tales do, the story became embellished and changed. The story became one of the Wish Seed being a treasure that could grant any wish, but only the wish of the first person to touch it. Thankfully, the location of the Phoenix and the Wish Seed were forgotten.
Centuries passed. The egg did not hatch into a tiny Phoenix-chick in that time. The Phoenix responded by loving it more, by projecting more wishes into it. Of course, the Phoenix continued to protect it.
Hades, for his part, had forgotten about the entire deal. When it was brought to his memory, he did not know why he'd made it in the first place. It wasn't actually a game to procure the Phoenix's soul. The Phoenix was forever trapped in its immortality and not a prize for him. Maybe he'd just wanted to torment the thing. Yes, that sounded like something he'd do. He was bored and wanted to watch the Phoenix weep for a few centuries, gliding around his mountain lost in false hope, continuing his rebirth cycle without his "wish" being granted. When it came to Hades' cravings, if he could not have a soul that he wanted, he did everything he could to taunt, tease and twist the soul.
When he saw fit to begin a cosmic war with the Goddess of Light and with the human world, the thing he'd done with the Phoenix came to his mind. He used his agents to revive the rumors of the Wish Seed among the human nations. He sent his minions after the Wish Seed as a ruse, knowing that it would lure Palutena and her little messenger-boy like a charm.
The white-winged bass took the bait, even if his goddess knew that something more sinister was afoot.
The Phoenix fought all of the Underworld troops that came its way. They sincerely tried to take its beloved egg, knowing nothing but that order. The great bird snapped demons in half with its beak and dashed them across the stone with its talons. It lit itself aflame and burnt the enemies down to ashes. None came near the Wish Seed.
The Phoenix was exhausted by the time it locked eyes with another immortal being. He knew that the little angel was there to kill him. He also knew that it would not be a freeing death, but one he'd just come back from, in time. He also sensed that the angel wanted to take its unborn child.
He was going to burn that little angel's wings right off.
The little white-robed creature dodged, holding out his weapon. It happened as an accident, but a bolt of white-light energy hit the Wish Seed, breaking it open. There was no containing the Phoenix's rage after that. It wanted to destroy everything, and would if it left the mountain.
Are you running boy? You should never run from anything immortal, it attracts their attention.
Of course, the boy should have known that, being an immortal being, himself. He dodged, found a platform and jumped. The Phoenix felt a burning sensation in the back of his neck. It tore through his skull and he knew that it was over. He was falling – doomed to fall into rebirth.
He'd failed to protect his wish.
END.
Shadsie, 2014
Phoenix-blood. In Osamu Tezuka's "Phoenix" mangas (in which the title character is female), I remember one of the plot-points being people seeking her blood for immortality.
Yes, I made a reference to "The Last Unicorn" at the end there.
Videogames, if you want me to kill another Phoenix, stop with the birds and let me drop a virtual bomb on my birthplace, please.