I'm going to do a mass post today consisting of basically every chapter I have written thus far. It'll just be up here for anyone to find and read. Originally I planned on finishing the entire thing before posting but I think I'm more comfortable posting the chapters as they come along. Usually, I release three or four at a time anyways.
Disclaimer: There are many things in this world that do not belong to me. Kubera is one of them.
S-C-N-D
Courtship of a Phoenix
…
Nearly a hundred Garuda Clan Suras of different classes gathered around a white haired man. With a silver, zigzagging sword wrapped in his fingers, he stared at his people and announced a temporary departure. Quickly and concisely, he explained to them the arrangements he'd leave them—that as usual, Avifauna and Vinata were to take care of any significant clan affairs in his absence. And even though no one said anything, everyone knew that he named two names because he did not trust Vinata to be left in charge alone. They accepted the circumstances in silence.
Only one man stepped forward daringly.
"Hah?" sneered Vinata. "So it's Kubera this time? What, is Chandra not good enough for you to hunt anymore?"
…
Chapter Two: The Garuda Phoenix
N0 - approx. 1000000 years
…
"I have to fight you?" sighed Vinata exasperatingly, putting a claw to his forehead. "Why do I have to fight you? It'll just be like adding fire to more fire and neither of us will get anywhere until this whole planet turns into a flaming star."
"Oh, come on! I like stars!" Agni protested. Being one of the few friendly five zen gods, he often played along with Vinata's melodrama in what few encounters they had since the beginning of the universe. Incidentally, what few encounters they did have ended up setting millions and millions of planets aflame for many centuries to come. "I want to see if we can make a blue one this time!" he squealed with childish glee.
Vinata heaved a sigh. "For every one we do make, we blow up like five more. I can't even count on two talons the number of solar systems we've smothered."
The god shrugged. "As long as you don't smother any of my favourites, we're good."
The two of them were lounging on a blazing white star. Half transformed, Vinata had his legs crossed and his arms propped on his knees, interlacing lethally sharp talons supporting his chin. Agni, being the more informal and easygoing of the two, leisurely sprawled on his back. He was in his white flame form and almost completely camouflaged.
Vinata's calculating eyes stalked his figure. "How many times have you died so far?"
The fire god pulled his upper body erect, drowsily turning to the Nastika and meeting him with pale yellow-white irises. "Me?" he asked, holding up his two hands to count. "Five… six… forty seven, I think."
"Oh."
Agni squinted at him. "Oh?"
"Oh as in 'oh, I didn't expect that number to be so high,'" replied Vinata with a finger to his chin. "I think Chandra's count is up to twenty five—no, twenty six since he died again a while ago."
"Well, Chandra's not at the mercy of Gandharva every time he regenerates."
Vinata looked at Agni like he was crazy. "Are you kidding me? You're the one who stalks Gandharva and insists on brawling with him. How is it his fault that you've died so many times?"
Agni looked sheepish. He scratched at a cowlick. "Well…"
"And while Chandra's not at the mercy of Gandharva, he is at the mercy of Garuda, Shuri, and I when he isn't busy catering to one of his oracles. I mean, it's so ridiculously easy to hunt him that it's not even funny."
Vinata's eyes darkened as his ferocity emerged in a wide grin, lethal teeth bared and all. Apart from the rivalry with the Ananta Clan, the Chandra Hunt was one of his favourite pastimes. Even though his Clan Attribute of sky was more advantageous when facing someone like Kubera, he would much rather hunt someone less apathetic and less like Garuda in general. Besides, Garuda had the Origin Attribute of Light, which gave him an advantage over Chandra. Vinata didn't, and could thus prove he was superior by killing the God of Darkness before his king got a chance to.
Whenever he could find Chandra, that was. The god was an expert at hiding, and not much else. In battle, he lost to Nastikas quite easily, a little boring for Vinata who liked to play with his prey. The chase was all that mattered.
Too bad Chandra was still in the process of regenerating and would not be back for at least another ten millenniums.
While Vinata had been running all that through his head, Agni stood up. "Where is Garuda right now?" he asked, his white skirt flowing like wisps of a flame on the brink of extinguishing.
His adversary also rose to his feet—or rather, talons. "Garuda? He ran off to find Kubera somewhere for reasons beyond my understanding. A king like him rarely picks fight. He's been taking too much influence from Visnu. He seems to think that none of you are worth fighting anymore, unless you pick the fight with him first."
Agni frowned. "So another Gandharva."
"Basically, but—" Vinata's smile grew, "I am not above having a little brawl. What do you say you and I have a little fun for a change?"
Vinata outstretched his two hands toward the star, talons open and facing Agni as if welcoming a long lost kinsman into an embrace. In a flash, his wings flared and stretched. If they had been on a relatively small planet like Willarv, Vinata's wing span would have covered half of the sky.
The last of the orange-red feathers drifted and danced until they perished in the flames. Despite being on one of the hottest white stars in the universe, Vinata himself took little damage to the heat. The flares felt like little tingles on the tip of his feathers and the bottom of his feet. Even Agni's heat felt nothing hotter than a typical human day in Mistyshore.
Agni held Vinata's stare unsmilingly but his garments drifted in the powerful heat wave he was emitting as preparation for the upcoming battle. His colour tone changed once more from pale yellow-white to absolute white to the brink of light blue. Vinata waited a little longer for him to turn full blue and charge while the Nastika had not yet completed his transformation. Agni never did.
He must have thought that this battle would be like all the others.
"You better brace yourself," said Vinata, cracking his claws and holding them readily out in front of him. He gathered more vigor into his arms, transforming them them all the way up to his shoulders. "I'm actually going to aim to kill you."
Another second and his battle form was complete. Vinata stood as a half man, half bird, his wings outstretched and two arms completely animalistic, sharp claws and bright red feathers graduating giving way to tanned, dark skin at the shoulders. He kept the other parts of his body human, leaving on a dark, tattered red shirt that ended just above his waist and a skirt, also in tatters, barely reaching his knees.
The widening of lips was all the warning Agni got before Vinata shot forward swiftly. Agni hopped out of the way, leaving the Nastika to plunge deep beyond the gaseous surface of the star to its core. Somewhere down there, the blow was so great that a huge chunk of rock dislodged and disintegrated into tiny bits and pieces of flaming bullets, all shooting upward dangerously and sporadically.
When Vinata peered up, Agni had already taken on his battle form. A small, flaming white figure he was, with layers of fire forming into a skirt and more of the substance blessing him with wings.
The god swerved and swatted all the rocks that came his way. When he was thwarted by a boulder half the size of a mountain, Agni merely intensified his flame so that by the time it reached him, it was nothing but mouton drops of rock, dripping down the god's body and molding into one with his skirt.
With his mirthful eyes fixed on Agni, Vinata created a fireball twenty times his size and drove it straight into the centre of the star's core. Chunks of rock dislodged and shot straight for Agni. The unstable star was now cracking and spurting plasma everywhere, its fate already decided.
As the bits of rock approached Agni again, he simply deflected everything that was sent his way. Vinata, impatient, shot another fireball into the core before pushing his wings down and leaping off the unstable star. A millisecond later, it exploded into billions of pieces in a colourful supernova, engulfing both he and Agni.
Before long, Vinata shot out of the cluster of debris to land on one of the destroyed star's nearest planets.
Even with his shrewd eyesight, he could not discern where the star ended and Agni began. Every part of the supernova had the same intensity and the brightness that would have blinded all except for Yaksha Suras who were gifted with the Clan Attribute of light and a few Garuda Suras with very strong eyesight.
The remnants of Supernovae could remain for tens of thousands of years. Vinata couldn't possibly wait that long for one god; he had things to do, Ananta Suras to hunt and Nastika friends to visit. Knees bent, he angled his body downward, ready to shoot back into the fray, only stop upon catching sight of a very distinguished spot of blue.
Vinata grinned wider than ever.
The form of Agni slowly but surely emerged from the remnants of the blast, his pale blue eyes now fixated on Vinata in a rather apathetic manner. His hands were fisted and glued to his sides as the wings of flame raised him and brought him level with his opponent.
"So that's your blue flame," Vinata mused, two claws held out in a defensive manner. "This is the first time you've shown it to me. I'm curious as to how strong you are."
He charged again, springing with such vigor that upon leaving, the entire planet cracked and exploded. Vinata reached for Agni with the sharp nails of his left claw, intending to grab Agni around his ribcage and crush his very bones.
One second, Agni's flowing hair barely grazed his feathers, and the next, he found himself grasping at nothing. Vinata's eyes widened. In a split second, both of his wings burst into blue flames and his left arm had a long gash running from his claw to his shoulder.
Scowling, Vinata somersaulted in the air three times before diving and landing on another, smaller red star. His wound sizzled as he redirected energy there to regenerate.
Agni flew down to greet him once again. His blue face was ambivalent, as if he wanted to feel some sympathy for the Nastika but couldn't bring himself to because of either his nature or his caution of Vinata.
"Not bad," the red man growled grudgingly at the fire god. His wounds sizzled for one last time, leaving a row of newly grown feathers where it had been. "I never thought that a god would be able to lay a finger on me. I guess I underestimated you, Agni."
Once again, Vinata's wings sprung out of his back. This time, they were angled, folded and ready to flap at any indication of Agni's movement.
The fire god raised one blue eyebrow. "You're not going to show me your Sura form?"
"Do you want me to?"
"If you keep fighting me in this state, I'll end up killing you for real." Agni's entire figure shuddered at this as if it were a horrible notion. "I don't want to do that, especially if it means having Garuda hunt me for the next hundred millenniums."
"Oh, Garuda wouldn't care."
Agni looked dubious about that. "Yeah, well, still…"
Once again, Vinata's wings and arm burst into a storm of feathers, this time all spontaneously combusting before they merged with the star's surface. In the storm of fire, he gazed at Agni with a sharp glint in his eyes and an eminent frown.
Agni, too, settled down on the star, becoming white once more. He took a step closer to Vinata, nervous to the point where he was almost biting his nails. "Are we calling a cease fire?" he asked, momentarily pleased with himself with the reference to his own jurisdiction.
Vinata stared long and hard. "Are you should you should lower your guard so readily around me? I admit that I'm much less of a threat than, say, Gandharva, but I can still kill you."
With that, his eyes glowed and enlarged until they were entirely red and demonic.
"In my clan, they call me the Phoenix."
Right on cue, Agni leaped into the air, his wings of fire forming as he did. Blue flames shrouded his figure once more, bringing out his strongest battle form. He tossed balls of fire from one hand to another as if juggling them. Compared to his opponent, he was tiny, almost insignificant.
Vinata was at least a good fifty times larger than Agni in his Sura form and about one third the size of Willarv. The tip of his head had strands of beautiful, sleek yellow feathers sticking up. From there all the way down to his neck, the feathers darkened from yellow to orange. Even further down, the feathers changed from orange-red at his chest to bright red at his abdominal to burgundy from his thighs all the way down to his talons. Where his ears were, two orange horns jutted out, flaming at the tips. Similarly, his wings were also ignited at the golden tips, feathers darkening and reddening further inward.
Vinata flapped them, and for a second, all of the surrounding stars' flames were pushed away by the sheer force of the gust it made. Even Agni's flames dared to waver for a split second.
Vinata reached a claw out to touch Agni on the head. Even in his largest form, the fire god was barely bigger than the tip of a nail.
"Let me tell you how fire fights fire," the Nastika growled, his beak open and already forming a fireball big enough to rival the smallest planets. "I can't smother you like Gandharva can. Our powers will only feed each other. If we hit, we both get hurt. So I'll engorge your flames completely and make them mine."
He blasted the fireball at Agni, who barely avoided the bullet-like shot. Some few million miles behind him, Vinata's fireball obliterated another celestial body.
"You know," Agni sighed through half open lids, "You're putting me in a dangerous position. I might be visiting Yama sooner than I thought…" He ran a hand through his blazing, silver blue hair tiredly. "And here I was thinking that I could escape paperwork a little longer. Sorry, but I think I'm running out on this one."
Suddenly, he twisted and teleported elsewhere, leaving behind nothing but a whiff of smoke.
Vinata clamped his beak tightly. Stretching his wings again, he shot straight up at inhumane speeds. In a second, the stars and planets that had been surrounding him became nothing more than tiny speckles somewhere down below. At this position, he latched himself onto a planet that could barely support his weight. Directing his beak down, he gathered humongous amounts of energy and formed them into roaring balls of fire, ready to shoot jets in every direction.
"Agni, you can't hide from me."
Still no sign of him.
Vinata closed his eyes and then snapped them open sharply. If sound could travel in space, every being in the vicinity would have been deafened by the magnitude of the sound of fireballs shooting down like a blazing display of comets. The jets of fire destroyed hundreds of planets, asteroids and other bits of rock floating around. They even put some more smaller stars into unbalance and disequilibrium.
A blue speck caught his vigilant eyes for the second time.
Vinata dove toward it, grinning wildly. Agni was looking up at him with a very serious expression. With enough force to shake the entire inverse, they clashed. Then they broke apart. Then they clashed again.
One by one, the surrounding stars were destroyed by the heat and power of the two flames. Within a day, the part of the Human Realm where their battle took place was reduced to but colorful waste.
Vinata swatted a few rocks away from his face. "It's about time we finish this, no?"
Agni was panting heavily. His hair whipped wildly about him since he no longer had power to keep it in a tidy state. His clothes and wings also reflected his tiredness, now chipped, ragged and no longer refined. There were even seconds when his flame armor faltered, seconds where they approached the brink of vanishing.
Vinata himself was in pretty beat up shape. He had several gashes up his arms and legs. The feathers in his wings were all messed up, now a medley of orange, yellow and red instead of a gradual change. He reached a talon to his head to pull off a singed feather that had been dangling annoyingly just above his face.
Agni smiled. "Let's finish this."
Vinata nodded and lowered his body, positioning his beak at the small figure that was Agni, and prepared to clash with him one last time. He knew that he would never lose to Agni in this state, but he'd be lying to say that his muscles weren't sore at all after that fight.
"This was a great battle. You are a much worthier opponent than that warmonger Chandra." A blade of fire appeared in the giant bird's mouth as an extension of his beak.
Agni attacked first. A nasty fireball wrapped in his fingers, he aimed for the weak point of Garuda Suras—their eyes. But barely metres before he reached Vinata, the Phoenix pushed off of the planet and shot straight through him.
The last thing Vinata remembered was the exploding of a planet and its sharp debris battering his face. The leftover pieces of Agni's armor fell into the abyss, slowly smoldering as they did.
S-C-N-D
N0 - approx. 1000000 years
S-C-N-D
"What are you doing?"
Two red eyes snapped open to see another pair of silver directly above him. Garuda's standing figure towered over Vinata's lying one. Since a star was positioned directly behind his king, the stern face was covered in shadow. Which, of course, made it all the more serious.
Maybe a normal Sura would have been terrified, but not Vinata. Vinata simply stretched, sat up and groaned at the ache in his back, where his wings had been.
"Sleeping," the red man said, clutching his head. He refused to admit to Garuda that he had been unconscious for who knew how long. "I think I killed Agni."
Garuda held his sword close to his side. For what, Vinata didn't know. He couldn't possibly be considered a threat in his aching state, could he? "You shouldn't make a habit of sleeping on random planets," the king scolded. "It makes you an easy target for the gods and sets a bad example for other Nastikas of our clan."
"Mmhm," Vinata muttered noncomittally.
To which Garuda only knitted his eyebrows together quite worriedly. Vinata considered laughing at the absurd expression but held back because he was too sore and tired to taunt his king.
"What are you thinking now?"
Garuda continued to stare blankly at him. Vinata almost rolled his eyes at the blatantly childish cold shoulder before the masked man spoke, "If you must know, I'm considering all the possible reasons why you would be so foolish to try and fight a god who wields the same element you do. Are you bored of Chandra or is this some twisted attempt to sabotage my alliance with Gandharva?"
Vinata picked at his teeth. "Gandharva should be thankful that I got rid of a nuisance for ten thousand years. Unless some part of him actually secretly enjoys fighting with Agni, in which case he'll probably be mad at you for a while."
"Why would Gandharva be mad at me if you stole his prey?"
Vinata shrugged. "I don't know. I'm from your clan."
"And not a single day passes by where I don't wish otherwise," murmured Garuda.
If Vinata heard, he didn't show it. He stayed silent and for once, contemplative. Garuda searched the two red eyes for ill intent, but found none. All Vinata did for the next ten minutes was sit with his legs in a W shape and his arms slack between his knees.
Just as Garuda was about to coax him to return to their mountainous lands, Vinata asked, "Garuda, what are you afraid of?"
The question itself seemed genuine enough. Garuda just didn't know if he should answer it with a truthful answer.
How pathetic, he thought, when you can't even trust your own lieutenant. Gandharva never had this problem with Makara or Urvasi… Shuri never had this problem with her Nastikas…
He looked at the sitting man and tried to picture Vinata sitting in his throne, weilding his sword and barking out orders. Knowing Vinata and his extreme mood swings, the clan would be toast in less than a year. Maybe it would become a world where the Garuda Suras screamed at everything that displeased them. Maybe it would become a world where they hunted Gandharva and Yaksha Suras and killed them without hesitation.
Garuda wasn't afraid of that. Vinata had his own ideals and his own way of ruling as king. It was just that the notion of it all left a bitter taste in his mouth. Be it he crown, the yelling, the throne, something just wasn't right about that image. Something wasn't right when he wasn't keeping the flamboyant Nastika in check.
Closing his eyes, Garuda turned and walked away from sitting figure.
"What am I afraid of?"
What if Vinata had indeed been killed by Agni? A world with no Vinata… It would be peaceful. Yet if it actually happened, Garuda would actually become enraged enough to tear Agni apart limb after limb.
He closed his eyes and shook the confusing thought away.
"…Nothing."
S-C-N-D
This was a little long. All my other chapters range from 2000-3000 words. Um, not sure this scene is needed at all in the story, actually. :D But it was fun writing the battle between Agni and Vinata. I imagine that battles between gods and Nastikas are absolutely astronomical and awe-striking.
Thank you for reading! Please leave a review!
-SCND