Here's what I ended up with.
Rise of the Phoenix King - Part One
Three kingdoms came together to crush one. Like a flash
flood, the blood lust washed over the eastern kingdom. In less than a day the
once beautiful eastern landscape was razed to nothing more than stone and ash.
No greater tragedy had ever been recorded in the annals of history. The skies
wept over the land for months after the slaughter and during this time the
three leaders of the remaining kingdoms came together to vow a pact of peace
for evermore. The shock of the devastation surprised them beyond their wildest
imaginings. They repented against their actions, and vowed never again to have
such action be taken against men or otherwise.
But as they sat in their palaces brooding, the second son of
the eastern king whom none had known about began to realize his lineage in a
small village on the furthest fringes of the eastern kingdom. He was the only
living heir of the bloodline of the phoenix, and his vengeance would be all
consuming.
A great fog rose to shroud the borders of his kingdom from
the rest of the world, and behind its veil he began to rally his scattered
people. He sent forth a number of his Shadow Watchers to infiltrate each of the
three kingdoms and to gather information about the plot that had brought about
the destruction of the family he had never known, and why three kingdoms feared
his bloodline so much that they would sooner wipe it from history than attempt
to meet in peace.
To Izikithin it mattered little. Their actions had awakened
him, and he would avenge his family at all cost. His people, having been
ruthlessly attacked without warning would back him fully without question.
Theirs was now a life dedicated to war and revenge. Driven by hate, the engine
of destruction churned behind the great veil for decades, preparing, growing, and
waiting for its chance to spew forth.
A new capital city was forged out of the ruins of the old,
carved of stone. At its heart, a twin spire rose from the peak of a mountain,
crowned at the top with a palace of Obsidian trimmed with gold and alabaster. A
natural spring broke forth from the earth between the spires, spilling over the
sides of the mountain, carving out a lake all around the base of the mountain,
and a river that ran north and south to form a new border along the edge of the
veil. It seemed even the earth sought to avenge the wrongs wrought upon it.
Izikithin’s resolve was only strengthened further by this,
seeing it as a sign that he was destined to take up the fallen mantle of his
family. The evening of the twentieth year since the attack, Izikithin dreamt he
was flying over his land. It was lush and vibrant once more. He had no body, at
least not a human one. As he flew over
all corners of his realm and back to his palace, he caught a glimpse of his
reflection in the lake surrounding his home. It was that of a phoenix. He woke
the next morning to find that the veil was beginning to thin. The time had
come.
In less than a week, the entire might of the rebuilt kingdom
had gathered on the western border. The sands of the north and the windswept
mountains of the west would be sundered first. Lastly, seeing their end coming,
the mists to the south would boil under the full gaze of the phoenix.
On the eighth morning of the campaign, Izikithin stood on
the precipice of a hill overlooking the desert capital of Shan-Um-Drah, his leather
and chain armor draped about him, billowing slightly in the risings winds from
the west. He planted one sandaled foot upon a boulder, gripped the hilt of the
sword at his side with his right hand, and raised his war lance towards the
city with his left. The sun danced across his sinewy muscles as he raised his
head to the sky and bellowed at the top of his lungs. His army fell upon the
walls of the city in a great rush. What happened next none would believe for a
thousand years as possible, for it had never been witnessed before nor again
since.
A great serpent rose from the sands beyond the city, another
appeared in the sky from the west gliding on the winds, and most dazzling of
all, a great phoenix rose up from where Izikithin stood. The three came
together above the northern capital to convene.
