The Xetyas - The Fire of the Phoenix

Prologue

The baby was crying in Elenah’s arms as the young woman fled into the pitch‑black night, the forest foliage shifting around her like threatening shadows. Thunder rumbled with a deafening roar, heightening the already suffocating dread. As lightning lit up the sky, Arlot turned to his wife while drawing his sword from its scabbard.

‘Quickly, they’re coming!’

Elenah pushed herself harder, holding her child tightly against her while Arlot guided them through the winding maze of the woods.

Lightning exploded nearby and several trees caught fire. The child’s cries intensified.

‘It’s all right, shhh, calm down,’ murmured Elenah.

Arlot and Elenah kept moving at a swift pace beneath the growling sky, though no rain fell. Suddenly, more bolts struck across the forest, setting the vegetation ablaze in terrifying bursts. Deer, stags and foxes fled as the air became impossible to breathe.

‘They went this way!’ shouted voices not far behind them.

Arlot paled, and Elenah saw fear stain her husband’s blue eyes as never before. It deepened her own panic.

She had no illusions about her fate, nor that of the man she loved. It was for someone else that fear froze her blood: that being so fragile and so innocent who rested in her arms.

Still running, breath failing her, she could not hold back her tears.

They had killed everyone, leaving no survivors. And the same awaited her. Death. Hers, and her child’s.

Fuelled by fierce determination, Elenah ignored the flames around her, the scent of burning pine, and sped on, trying to escape the spreading fire, Arlot close behind.

But as they burst into a clearing, men emerged before them and on both sides.

Arlot instantly reached out to pull his wife behind him in a protective gesture, his sword raised.

‘Don’t do this, Krol, I beg you!’ he shouted towards the tallest of them.

The man had a thick grey beard beneath sunken green eyes, and long white hair framed a face whose years had not erased its youthful beauty.

He was the one who commanded the others.

Several bolts struck the trees around the clearing, setting everything alight.

But no one moved.

The attackers were heavily armed and stared unblinking at the couple before them.

‘I have no choice,’ Krol replied in a hollow voice.

Arlot turned to Elenah.

‘I love you. Go!’

Then he intercepted the men who charged at him. With agility and grace, he avoided the axe aimed at splitting his skull, slipped behind two of the assailants, and skewered one of them before pulling his sword free, kicking the torso aside to deal the same fate to the second.

Sensing movement behind him, Arlot ducked just in time to avoid the blow that would have taken his head clean off.

He quickly regained his footing and brought his weapon down on the shoulder of the man who had nearly killed him, delivering a blow powerful enough to cut him down. The man collapsed instantly, felled in two.

And suddenly, Arlot felt a searing pain pierce through his abdomen.

‘NO!’ screamed Elenah behind him, her cry tearing through the air.

Arlot looked down. A double‑edged blade jutted from his stomach, staining his linen shirt with spreading red.

His blood.

The pain gave way to numbness in his legs, rising through his body. He fell to his knees, the sword pulled free, and life drained from him.

His last thought was for Elenah, and for their child he would never see grow.

As Krol wiped the blade that had just taken her husband’s life, Elenah swallowed her tears and fled, holding her child wrapped in white wool even tighter. She weaved between the trunks, escaping the fire and the clearing.

The shouts and pounding footsteps of her pursuers echoed behind her. They would catch her too — she was certain of it. She had to hide her baby. But where? There was nothing in this burning forest.

The trees ahead suddenly ignited, and with horror she realised she was trapped. Flames surrounded her on all sides as her husband’s killers closed in.

A sudden rush of wind roared above her, and she looked up. The sky was blackened by suffocating smoke rising from the charred canopy.

Thunder rumbled again.

And with it came the powerful, rhythmic beat of wings. No sound could be mistaken for it — the wings of a dragon striking the air.

It appeared suddenly, high above, gliding through the smoke.

Elenah longed to call out to it, to beg it to unleash its fearsome fire upon her pursuers.

But it vanished as swiftly as it had come.

‘It’s over, Elenah,’ came Krol’s voice from her right.

Elenah closed her eyes for a brief second. She kissed her baby and laid him on the ground. With a gaze filled with infinite love, she brushed his cheek one last time with her fingertips.

Then she rose, swiftly drawing a dagger she kept hidden in her shoe.

The men around Krol snickered, but not him. He watched the young woman with respect.

‘I promise not to make you suffer,’ he murmured.

‘May you all rot before the judgement of the gods!’ she spat. ‘And burn beneath the flames of their wrath!’

As Elenah lunged, several bolts struck around them, the storm intensifying until the air itself trembled.

Krol dodged her knife strike, and she immediately launched a new assault, forcing him into deft footwork to evade her swift gestures that sliced the air with her blade.

Sensing his men shift, he ordered them not to intervene.

Another bolt burst to their right, and the fire of the flames grew ever more scorching and suffocating.

Elenah dropped low and swept her leg towards Krol’s feet to bring him down. He leapt over her with ease.

A new searing blast struck to their left, charring the grass, while the baby’s cries rose through the air with the same force as the thunder.

In a single leap, Elenah sprang up and aimed her dagger at Krol’s face. He caught her wrist with practised precision.

With a violent twist, he forced her arm behind her back and held her against him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed into her ear.

Then he raised his sword and drove it into her abdomen.

Elenah slid to the ground, every part of her tightening to withstand the pain.

Dying in the grass, the glow of flames around her, she saw another bolt strike a few steps away.

‘Where’s the child?’ one of the men shouted.

‘What do you mean?’ Krol replied. ‘He was right there. She put him down in front of us.’

‘He’s gone!’ insisted the man.

‘That’s impossible!’ several of the attackers exclaimed.

Elenah closed her eyes and went still, a faint smile stretching her lips.

Chapter I

Ellie stepped out of her small blue car and ran along the street towards her parents’ house. Once again, she was late. And she couldn’t blame it on struggling to find a parking space, given that she had left home thirty minutes behind schedule.

She entered the family home without bothering to knock, the door never being locked in this village deep in the north of France where everyone knew one another. At once, the flowery scents of potpourri she had grown up with washed over her, and she felt as though she were a teenager again.

At thirty years old, she had a younger brother ten years her junior, whom her parents had had late in life. Her mother had been so surprised that she had cried with joy. It had puzzled Ellie. Even at ten, she had already been a child who asked a few too many questions. Since her mother had already had a baby, what was so incredible about her becoming pregnant again?

Ellie had been delighted to have a little brother, happily playing doll with him. But very quickly, she had realised that her parents never left her alone with him. As though they were afraid she might break him, and wanted to keep this son constantly in sight. They were so protective of Sasha that Ellie often found herself left to her own devices while they tended to him, treating him like the most precious of treasures.

At school too, she had grown used to being alone. The other children never seemed to want to play with her.

However, she didn’t mind. She liked staying in her own corner and couldn’t bear being surrounded by too many people. The noise of a crowd exhausted her.

Ellie stepped into her parents’ living room, with its immense bay windows and tasteful décor. Sasha was there, sitting on the impressive beige sofa, his short blond hair tucked beneath his usual grey cap. His hazel eyes immediately lifted towards his sister. He had just obtained his marketing degree, with highest honours as always, and glasses of champagne had been set out on the table.

‘Ahah, I bet you’d be late!’ he exclaimed with a broad smile.

Everyone in Ellie’s family was blond, with shades ranging from dark blond to ash blond, but blond all the same. And they were all very tall, with hazel or brown eyes. Ellie, on the other hand, was of average height and had long, thick brown hair with auburn highlights, as well as almond-shaped sapphire-blue eyes whose irises were ringed with a thin circle of light brown. With an oval face, high cheekbones and milky skin that gave her the look of a porcelain doll, she blushed easily in the sun, even though the northern French sun was far from aggressive. And this also set her apart from her family who, despite their blondness, tanned remarkably well.

Ellie settled into an armchair between her cousins, while her brother opened his graduation presents.

It made her smile and reminded her of when she had earned her engineering degree. She had then believed that life would become easier and that she would gain freedom. But thinking that had been a mistake. In this world ruled by societal laws, freedom did not exist. Especially in companies, where she couldn’t stand the atmosphere, feeling it was a form of slavery. In truth, she was still searching for her path.

She closed her eyes and mentally slapped herself. She really needed to stop having these kinds of thoughts. It was because of them that she had never managed to make many friends, and that she struggled to work in a team, people not understanding her and looking at her as though she were an alien.

‘How’s work?’ her cousin asked, who was only a year younger than she was.

Blond, with almost black eyes, she was athletic and had the body of a marathon runner. Unlike Ellie, who was slender but had absolutely no muscle, harbouring a deep aversion to any physical activity. Even if she had to admit that on the rare occasions she managed to motivate herself to go running, it cleared her mind – a mind that thought far too much and far too fast.

‘Same as usual. It exasperates me,’ Ellie replied.

‘I thought you liked inventing and creating things!’

‘Yes, that’s not the problem. You have to arrive at a certain time, not leave before a certain time. No right to work from home because the higher-ups want to keep an eye on you… and no one seems bothered by the fact that they’re given a schedule and rules under threat of being fired. I can’t stand this system anymore. Instead of valuing performance and efficiency, they prioritise controlling people by imposing nonsensical rules and endless processes that complicate everything unnecessarily. Companies are twenty-first-century slavery!’ Ellie retorted.

Caroline rolled her eyes while Aurélien, her cousin, snickered.

‘You’ll never change. If people weren’t told to come in at a certain time, they’d stay home ad vitam aeternam and watch television all day while moving the mouse from time to time.’

‘Not if they want to be paid! What matters is that the work gets done. Who cares when and how it’s done? Managers prefer seeing someone sitting at a desk from nine to six, coming up with excuses for delays because at some point they’re no longer efficient, rather than simply taking into account that tasks are completed on time and with the required quality.’

Hélène, Ellie’s mother, approached then.

‘Isn’t Dany here?’

‘We’re not together anymore, Mum,’ Ellie replied in a tone signalling she didn’t want to talk about it.

Which her mother ignored, as usual.

‘Why? He seemed nice! Good job, well brought up, handsome boy. What more do you need?’

The same conversation again, which immediately put Ellie on the defensive. At thirty, one was expected to have a husband, children, or at least plans for children, and a stable job. Otherwise, relatives worried and the rest of society considered that the person had failed at life.

More than once, Ellie had thought that she didn’t resemble her family at all, and they constantly made her feel it, even if they acted out of love and not malice.

People had often mocked her for her different mind, her way of speaking too fast, and saying things that sounded bizarre to others.

In truth, if one asked her what her greatest fear was, she would answer ‘rejection’ without hesitation. And that fear had worsened when, a few weeks earlier, her boyfriend had left her for another woman.

They had only been together six months, and she didn’t think she had fallen in love with him, even if she had liked him a lot at first. But being left for another woman was not the best situation to soothe an already deep-rooted fear of rejection. ”Too much in your own world”, or “you never open up to me”, or “you’re strange” were the reproaches he had thrown at her.

She had then switched off her emotional system, as she knew so well how to do, and had walked away, leaving him there with his criticisms. She hadn’t even cried. No point shedding a tear for him.

“Too much in your own world.” Yes, she had heard that often. But the truth was that she didn’t do it on purpose. She simply didn’t feel connected to the world around her and preferred living in her own reality. One where societal rules hadn’t been invented out of thin air by human beings, while everyone else followed them without asking a single question about their legitimacy.

The day dragged on, her family laughing together and recounting their week at work. What this or that colleague had done, or the juicy news learned during meals with friends, or even the latest announcements from the media, who loved to turn every situation into “the end of the world is coming”, terrifying and heightening the stress of individuals whose increasing depression rates seemed to alarm no one. And Ellie watched the hours pass, waiting for the right moment when she could slip away without offending her family by leaving early, as usual.

She finally stood up and grabbed her bag from the coffee table near the entrance, while Sasha joined her. He lifted his cap and pushed his hair back, then asked, placing an affectionate hand on her cheek:

‘Another bastard?’

Understanding what her brother meant, Ellie shrugged.

‘I’m a magnet for them.’

‘There are good guys out there, sis. If only you’d give them a chance.’

‘I do give them a chance!’ Ellie exclaimed, stung.

She had given Dany a chance these past six months. And… what was his name again? That one went back five years and had only lasted five months. And before that… Ellie thought, realising her love life was a monstrous void. Never mind, she told herself. Better to be alone than in bad company.

Sasha watched his sister, guessing she was caught in one of her usual internal reflections. He didn’t understand her, but he loved her and wanted her to be happy. Just like the rest of their family. Ellie knew that. Every annoying piece of advice her parents gave her about how she should live her life came from love. She knew that perfectly well. But the life they so desperately wanted her to live wasn’t for her, and she could never change anything about it, not understanding the reasons herself.

She kissed her brother on the cheek, waved goodbye to the rest of her family, and stepped outside, breathing in the fresh air.

Rain had begun to fall, which was hardly surprising at the end of summer. Ellie tucked her long hair into the hood of her blue jacket and pulled it over her head just as she saw a flash of lightning streak across the grey sky above her. A low rumble followed immediately.

‘Oh no,’ she squeaked.

She hated thunderstorms.

She hurried to get back to her car. Where had she parked it again? All the spaces in front of her parents’ house were taken by her family’s cars, and she had had to park further down the street.

Then thunder roared right above her and she jumped.

She quickened her pace. She knew one shouldn’t run during a storm, the body releasing energy that made it easier for lightning to reach the ground. Nevertheless, she was far from reassured. She moved as fast as she could, taking small strides.

The sky suddenly grew so dark that she struggled to make out what lay ahead. A sinister rumble cracked above and around her, and bolts struck the wet road in several places.

Feeling a fear she had never experienced before, her instinct wanted to take over her mind and tell her to flee. Ellie barricaded her terror behind her emotional protection wall, as she had done since childhood, and forced herself to walk calmly.

Again the lightning boomed, and struck. She felt as though the thunder had erupted all around her. She let out a cry despite herself.

She then spotted her car a few metres away and, galvanised by terror, she ran.