[b][u]Antithesis of Scorn | Ko Rudo Mountains[/u][/b] "So, Alister, that is how you ended up here? After all these years..." Lucien sat cross-legged on a rock as he gazed down at the younger boy in front of him. The boy wore a black t-shirt with a caricature gas mask emblazoned on the front with the words [i]"PYROMANIAC"[/i] scrawled under it in a very Metallica album cover-like font. His pants were combat pants bearing dark blue urban camouflage. The boy himself had skin like his own - tanned, with a face bearing spiked black hair near the front above light hazel eyes. His own apparel was rather simple. His signature thick longcoat gathered some of the sedimentary dust of the mountain cave he sat inside, overlooking a bonfire made of regular flame. To use his own for a conventional fire would be... Unorthodox, to say the least. "Yes, Lucien. When I first came here, I loved it. I loved it so dearly that I was willing to die for it." "And so you did." "...yeah. Alex Wilson, drove Razorflame through my spine days after I gave it to him." "This was intended?" "Of course. Martyrdom would unite the Dojo and reveal the true enemy... The usurping spider," Phoenix mused as he thought back on June Bellicose and the despair she caused, "she tore my entire home apart and started a civil war of sorts. Felix killed her after, but nonetheless I was willing to show my people that we must keep the ground we fight upon sacred and away from the politics of war." "But you were exiled soon after?" "I would prefer not to reflect on my -" There was an explosion in the background, heard all the way in the mountains. Lucien was not fazed by it for he had grown accustomed to such things in the Dojo, but Phoenix doubled over and brought his hand to the rocky wall as he began coughing. It was as if the explosion had somehow hurt him. Phoenix dropped to a single knee and held his head in pain, cutting himself off with a shout of surprise. "Alister? Alister, what is it?" The ashen avatar Phoenix was manifesting in crumbled away slowly, leaving only the fiery silhouette - Phoenix's true manifestation outside of Lucien. "Alister! What's wrong?" A sword of pure flame drove itself into Lucien's heart, pinning him to a wall. Lucien struggled to free himself as the fire began to solidify into a katana - one etched with unholy runes and had a spine and guard made of broken spine segments, each carved ornately with tales of pure hatred... "Alister..." The silhouette of fire approached Lucien, a thick VINC exosuit forming over its form, complete with an M134 minigun mounted upon its shoulder. [b]"My name is Alister no longer, False Prophet."[/b] Lucien tried to speak, but only boiling blood spilled through his lips. [b]"My name is Phoenix. And I remember."[/b] Feeling his skin melting off of his flesh and being absorbed into the fiery armour, Lucien took one last glance at the figure's head: an exosuit helmet with a single circle-shaped visor optical akin to a Cyclops', burning a cobalt blue full of hatred. And then the armour opened up like some twisted iron maiden and took Lucien's burning body within itself. (Closed. Foreshadowing post...)