Rebirth of the Phoenix God

"Excuse me, is there any chance… Oh, there you are!'

Slamming the doors of the Inn open, Cleo burst into the location without paying any mind to the peace of the other customers. But one couldn't deny how effective this kind of tactic would be in any other scenario. Gathering all the attention on herself and instantly using it to ask a question would work in any other scenario. 

But what she couldn't expect, was the fact that nearly the entire middle part of the Inn was empty, with Fen and his two friends sitting in the middle of this empty space!

"Cleo? What the heck are you doing here?"

Not angry at all, Fen's pupils were filled to the brim with shock. While seeking him through the day wasn't something strange, the fact that she was willing to put so much effort to find him even though she knew he would be back at home as soon as he would finish his matters was the instant indicator that something really huge has happened. 

After all, the young mercenary wasn't that naive to believe that she just lucked out by picking this Inn. The fact that she ultimately ended up in this place had to be not only the result of her efforts of checking through all the taverns she could think off but also the sign of her determination wich how she managed to find him despite knowing how arduous this kind of task would be!

"Cleo? I see you are rather quick to find a replacement for me…"

Whispering those words under her nose, Orsha's face darkened a bit before her expression lit up again when scolded by Fen's sudden and angry glance. 

"As if you had any right to speak about such thing…"

Throwing a quick response that nailed the point of the matter right away, Fen stood up from the desk and moved towards the girl. If she managed to find him in this unspecific and undistinctive Inn, there was a huge chance that her news was urgent. Otherwise, she could just wait for him at home!

"So, what happened? I can tell that it's nothing destructive because you wouldn't be grinning so much if that wouldn't be the case."

Standing in front of the panting girlfriend of his, the young mercenary looked at her face with curiosity. As slightly annoying as it was for her to butt in during the important meeting where he and his friends were about to decide the course of their actions during the war season, it still meant that she believed it was something important enough to bother him. And as such, Fen couldn't help but feel the tingle of curiosity.

"I'm sorry for bothering you, but I received this letter…"

Freezing all over, Cleo's face turned dark as she started patting her body all over, only to relax back to her usual, carefree smile once she found out something. Pulling out a letter from one of the inner pocket of her robes, she passed it to Fen's hands.

"Some kind of dignified man came looking for you. From what I heard, he asked around in the academy and even in the town's administrative office, but ended up giving this task of relaying the letter to you to me once he found out we are living in the same place. He asked me to find you as soon as possible so I did my best to do that!"

Stretching herself out with an accomplished smile on her face, this damned girl looked as if she suddenly turned into some kind of dog that just followed its owner commands and expected either some treats or pats. 

"Eh.. Thanks for that. Let me see what this entire letter is all about…"

With his curiosity already on the verge of erupting, Fen barely managed to rein his emotions in before moving back to the table to pick up his knife and using it to break the seal on the letter open. 

But no matter how much he looked at the letter, one thing was stopping him from understanding its content.

"Hey, Victor. Do you, by any chance, know Gizadian?"

While the languages between the countries only differed by a small degree, the same couldn't be said about the imperial tongue. Given how enclosed this country was to the rest of the world, the natural processes that made all the other languages in the central continent rather similar didn't apply to the seat of power of the oppressive heretic church. 

"Yeah, gimme."

Passing the letter to his friend's outstretched hand, Fen stared at Victor's face. And with his friend's expression continuing to sink darker and darker, the young mercenary could see that his call to deal with this matter right away was the correct one.

"And?"

Barely capable of holding himself back from tearing the letter from Victor's hands in order to force him to tell what its content was all about, Fen limited himself to just slightly hurrying his comrade up.

"Fen… Do you by any chance know a man named Hekarion?"

As if lightning struck the very middle of the dining room of the tavern. With one of the names that Fen didn't expect to hear suddenly resurfacing, his face followed the lead of Victor's and turned dark. After all, given how they were just talking about the different factions that appeared in the south, it was no wonder what the name of this powerful figure from Akhaz appearing on a letter directed to him would mean!

"I… I do know the name. He was a teacher of a man who saved my life back after… I barely got away from the execution orchestrated by the inquisition."

As much as Fen trusted in his friends, there was no way he would reveal the truth about his bloodline to them, not to speak about the fact that he somehow not only died already but was still well and alive despite that. Allowing Cleo and the random visitors of the tavern who were now intently listening to every word that would appear in this place to hear those news as well would be even more disastrous.

"Okay, I won't blueball you any longer."

Putting the letter down on the table with a deep sigh, Victor shook his head before raising his sight back at his younger friend.

"A man going by the name of Hekarion just asked you to come to Akhaz to help him convince a man going by the name of Mark that their differences are not that great and they should stop their conflict before other parties will intervene. And if I'm not wrong by the context and the phrasing, as my Gizadian isn't the one ability I would flex when meeting someone I would want to impress, this letter indirectly states that this Hekarion and Mark men are leaders of the two Akhazian factions that we just spoke about."

If the news that it was the Hekarion that sent this letter were enough to shake Fen's mind, then the full content of the letter was simply too much. Falling down powerlessly on his seat, Fen could only stare forward at the table in front of him for a while before waking up from his daze… Only to take a sip of his drink and return to this shocked state of his.

"Fen, what's going on?"

Completely out of the loop, Orsha stole a quick glance from the letter, but from the confused expression on her face, it became obvious that she couldn't decipher the Gizadian runes that covered the formerly sealed sheet of paper.

"Well… The timing of receiving this letter couldn't suck more. Didn't we just agree to ignore the south and revel in the north? Heh…"

Fully and completely broken by the sudden appearance of his past, Fen for the first time in their time together, revealed his powerless side to his friends. For this one, fleeting moment, this mastermind of most of the plots that made them so successful in the north, was incapable of even coming up with an idea to how this problem should be solved.

"Fen, tell us what's going on. If the situation has changed, our decision can change as well, you should realise that. Or is that you don't have any trust in us, always opting to somehow convince us with logic alone to your rations and train of thought?"

Even though Orsha no longer shared her intimate time with Fen, it couldn't be said that once they broke up their former and loose relationship she would somehow forget about everything she learned about the young man in the past. Noticing the enormous distress on the young arcanist face, something that he didn't even show when he was in a situation where he could die like a random fly, she made sure to look him straight in the face as she asked it.

And the meaning behind her actions was quite obvious.

"I get it. To put it in short words, the awakening of my arcana… Happened in some pretty complicated, unusual and drastic scenario. To cut directly to the chase, after my awakening, I had to escape as quickly as I could, scoring quite a lot of injuries in the process and almost ending up starving on the side of the road. The person named Mark… He picked me up, fed me, cared for me and became the very first teacher I ever had in my life. Hekarion in turn was not only Mark's teacher but also a pretty influential figure in the city of Akhaz, where Mark took me after saving me from the death that I just mentioned."

Quickly explaining the situation, Fen stopped the nostalgic recounts of the events before he could forget about the importance of something else that he had to reveal to his friends.

"But what's more important, is that if the church gets their hands on either one of them, and if they by any chance get interested in the details of my situation… Then you can expect the entire inquisition, Gizadian Royalty and the rest of the church to drop everything and come after me."

Taking a short break in his explanations to take a sip of his drink, Fen moistured the dry throat of his. Just thinking about what he was about to say next was enough to scare even the young arcanist.

"Victor, do you remember when you guessed that I possess the bloodline of one of the first pioneers?"

Instead of revealing the truth right away, Fen mentioned the time when he first revealed a part of his abilities to his friend.

"Yeah, I remember that. But I don't think its something you should…"

Instead of letting Victor finish his sentence, Fen simply silenced him with a stern gaze of his before spreading his arms and summing the entire situation up.

"I'm not a descendant of one of the first pioneers. I'm a true heir in the direct line to the first King of the mercenaries. In other words, for some reason, I'm the only living royal of the ancient."