51st Day | 37th Year of Hogumpen | Eyjavo Kingdom 

“Your Majesty, they're almost at the gates. What should we do?” asks the head king's guard, his calm demeanor a vivid contrast to the chaos unfurling outside. 

Outside, beyond their barred throne room doors, and then further beyond the expanded ballroom-sized antechamber gates, the rebel army were hard at work—rebelling against the palace guards. The ring of clashing swords, and the howls of falling soldiers and rebels alike have been reverberating through the blood decorated walls of the grand palace halls for the last four hours, and still the volumes did not reduce. 

Inside, atop the obsidian throne, sat Eyjavo’s King, King Regele Mansomi the II, rocking both his brains and his unmoving throne for an answer. ‘It's not like I didn't see this coming,’ he thought to himself in a brief reprieve, and truly it was so, for the fall of his once floating kingdom was gradual in its coming. 

Eyjavo, originally an island kingdom, spent its time drifting about, letting the currents of the world carry it around. The flat lands were infertile, and the ocean around it vast. Hence its people were fisher folk. Their dependence upon the trade had grown so severe that it had baked itself into their culture, their tradition, and meshed into their daily lives. This was so much so that it was, and still is to this day, said that an Eyjavoan is born twice – once in the watery womb of their mothers, and twice in the wrapping womb of the ocean. 

Necessity had borne proficiency within the fisher folk of Eyjavo – they were the best of the best. ‘Tis a fact that was roared in taverns all around the world, spread through the drunken mouths of old retired fishermen, fishermen who had once–by sheer dumb luck–stumbled onto Eyjavo's land, only to find it never again. And anyone could find these wild tales for themselves, for they still persist to this day, albeit muddled with crazy exaggerations of the original tale. They called it the floating land of bliss.

Wild as they may be, the tales did get one thing right, Eyjavo truly was the floating land of bliss. The people–nay–the land, untethered to the fixed world, roamed free all over the world. This proved to be a great deterrent to the negatives of the stale monotonous life. But, alas, for the bliss did not last. It was with great sadness that the ocean gave up its debris of bliss onto the lands of fixated corruption. But it happened, for it had to happen.   

The only constant in this ever changing world is change itself.

The land and its people had to learn that the hard way. 

This transmigration happened in the Boom of the Zenith, a near apocalyptic event, where their migratory island had been shoved into the stationary lands by the rising titan waves, and what followed thereafter was a collision of colossal proportions, the result of which was the fusion of the lands. The lands had intertwined into one another, molten earth melded into each other, and birthed the mountains that are now called the cliffs of the world.

Hence, the people that were once free from the attachments of the world had finally become attached to it, and all the sins that came with it. They had been a people of migration, nothing stayed the same for a second day. So the concept of stagnation in an unchanging environment was as foreign to them as was this concept was to the people of stagnation. And after a few decade long loss of that once surreal harmony had gradually ignited the embers of civil unrest amongst all of Eyjavo’s people. Amidst this chaos, the heartfelt cry of a single man had brought together the scattered populations of Eyjavo, and united them under one banner, the banner of rebellion. 

“MAJESTY, what do we do? The guards can't hold them back much longer.” Yelled Tullark, the head king's guard, his calm demeanor finally shattered.

Snapped back to attention, Regele gazed intently at the gold encrusted doors at the mouth of his room, trying his hardest to think of a way out. Shaking his head, he sighs, takes a deep inhale, and calls for his Royal Circle of Sorcerers, Warlocks, as they were more popularly called. 

“Agnes,” the King calls the leader of the circle. He steps forth. 

“What are your wishes, my King?” he asks, bowing. 

“You five have stayed with me till the bitter end, and I thank you for that. But as I see it, the rebels also have Magi amongst themselves, albeit weak ones, but their numbers drastically overrun ours. So-”

“Going on an all out magical warfare would not be beneficial for us, what do you wish for us to do, my King?” Agnes interjects. Normally, an interjection on the King’s speech calls for an immediate consequence, but considering the situation, and the status of the person interjecting, no one bats an eye.

The King smiles a sad smile. He looks outside, through a gold encrusted window they placed by his side that he did not want, sat atop a throne he did not want, forced to sight against the very people that he vowed to serve till death.

Outside, through his gold encrusted window, in the cold blue hue of the winter sky, on top of a Deadwood tree, a phoenix lay unmoving. Its dead body spontaneously sparks a tiny ember, which slowly grows in ferocity until it engulfs it in its entirety, burning the dead body into ash. The howling winds swept away that ash, and left behind on that branch was a new chic, rosy embers dancing on its cheek as it chirped joyfully. 

Sometimes you must burn down your old self in order to be born anew. 

“Agnes, begin the summoning.”