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The hike up the mountain is arduous, made none the easier by bare feet, golden shackles or the way the thin white fabric draped around his torso keeps getting caught by the wind. Anywhere they could fit jewelry, jewelry has been adorned. It is resplendent, but it is heavy.
The dragon demands gold. The dragon demands sacrifice. Today, Fai will be both.
The drums fall into silence and the echo of their death bounces back from the lush valley floor. His shoulders, arms and cheeks are one last time anointed by the sacred oil. Fai glances back to the beach, beautiful in the warm light of sunset. Up to the smoking caldera. He makes the final trek alone.
The cave seems to glow from within. The village elders say the volcanic magma flows freely in it’s depths. No one really knows. No one has ever returned to tell them. Fai walks to the center of the entrance, kneeling with his eyes averted. The chain linking his wrists is long enough to give him ease of movement, but he wraps the links around one cuff until they are held together tightly behind his back. He licks his lips.
“Kurogane!” His voice must be loud if it is to reach down that cavernous darkness. “I come on behalf of the village to offer myself as sacrifice. May you use me as you see fit, and I pray it sates your mighty hunger that you might grant my kinsmen mercy once more.”
A growl, a crackling sounds deep within the cave. Slowly it approaches. Fai can see feet; scaled, clawed and savage, each easily the size of his entire chest. He dares not look up.
The beast merely takes a breath and it catches rhythmically somewhere in his throat. Fai resolutely does not move as he can feel the hot breath against his shoulder, nudge against the side of his head. The feeling retreats and he watches from the corner of his eye as the body moves, walking a circle around him, tail curling to complete the shape. He is trapped.
There is the snap of a wing and air rushes from behind him, catching golden hair and teasing it messily out of the careful knots the attendants had tied into it this morning.
The dragon drew close to his back. Breath inches away from his left ear.
“Liar.”
Fai feels the panic shoot through his stomach, about to argue his innocence, but the deep voice cuts him off.
“I’ve known these people for longer than they have known themselves.” The tail curled around, pressing against his knee and shin with no small amount of force. The tip of his tail wrapped around Fai’s ankle. “They are no kin of yours.”
The dragon wandered away again, scales slithering against Fai’s leg as he left. “They dare bring me false sacrifice? Is the gold fake as well?” Fai watched as the reptilian feet curved around again, this time squaring up to him.
The air goes acrid. Kurogane is angry.
“Please! I do not intend offense. I offer myself in all sincerity!”
“And what exactly makes you think you are worthy?”
Fai can’t help it anymore. He-
He looks up.
The dragon is massive. Shining black keratin scales cover his form like living obsidian. His eyes seem to burn from within.
“I am not afraid of you.” Fai manages, looking up through golden bangs. He may be kneeling but his posture is proud.
The red eyes slide across his frame searchingly. Settle back on his face. “Then you are an idiot as well.”
And Fai is laughing.
Kurogane is incensed.
“You dare!?”
“Sorry! Sorry!” But Fai has doubled over; an attempt at deference ruined by the way his shoulders still tremble with mirth.
Kurogane wishes to hit him. To knock him to the ground. He takes a step forward and Fai does it for him in an attempt to get away, something a sacrifice should never do. The final straw is the freedom of his hands, chain unwound, becoming nothing more than another piece of jewelry.
No. A leash.
The chain is elegant but strong and it does not break as Kurogane hooks a claw around it and drags the slight human to standing. He yelps, an obvious protest to the strain of his wrists. He pulls on it, an attempt to get free again, and the chain snaps taught, but Kurogane is too tall, and the man too weak.
“You have insulted me.” Kurogane rears up to his full height. Fai’s neck cranes to watch him. He is trying to speak again, but Kurogane has had enough words today. “The village will pay for your insolence.” The heat builds in his stomach. “But you will not live to see their suffering.”
Fai brings his hands up, an attempt to protect himself, but there is nothing to stop the flame that blooms around him. Kurogane watches in anticipation as it catches the oil first, licking along the man’s arms and shoulders, caresses his cheek. He waits for the scream.
It does not come.
Instead the man looks up at him, this time humor plain on his face. A smirk. He should by all rights be a blistering corpse by now. What trickery? What perversion of nature is this?
Then the man takes a deep breath. On the exhale, the fires spreads across his skin until it consumes him. He becomes a creature of light. A creature of heat. It hurts Kurogane’s claws to be so close. These are not the temperatures he was made for. The man burns blue.
Kurogane tries to pull away but all it does is drag him closer, the chain still connecting him. “How!?”
Fai pulls hard on the restraint. Somewhere a weak link snaps and his hands move freely, if dragging gold across the black stone ground. The flame dances across his arms and his skin glows and crackles like embers. The fabric of his robe floats away a few threads at a time as it burns, glowing scraps of fabric carried back into the jungle by the breeze. Even the jewelry begins to melt, the golden adornments molten and dripping across the curves of his musculature. It is the only part of this sacrifice that was true, and it runs down his chest, down his arms and hands, flowing like metallic blood as if from a wound. Slow drops fall to the stone at his bare and burning feet.
With a smile Fai flicks a wrist and catches the length of chain in hand. Then he bears it like a whip and snaps it in Kurogane’s direction. It doesn’t touch him, but it doesn’t need to. Kurogane roars as molten splatters of gold fall across his chest, cooling and hardening to his dark scales almost immediately.
There is a dark laugh. “For once, you are not the only monster on this mountain.”
When he can bare to open his eyes again, he watches as wings of flame unfurl from the man’s back. It is not good news. Every legend he has ever heard tells him this creature should be extinct.
Kurogane shifts his stance, braces for a fight. The phoenix does the same.