Another short story I wrote as a worldbuilding piece for The Moons of Cerus, this time being a small little look at the phoenixes of Elia.
_________

From this high up in the sky, the Twilight Forest seemed so small beneath them. The dark, tangled growths of stonewood that grew stalwart within the tough earth of Elia’s equator created a labyrinthine mass of impenetrable roots and rough, jagged branches that made the Forest seem so much larger than it was. In reality, it was a small ring that covered that peculiar edge of the moon, where the sun was never quite there, but never quite gone.

Looking down, Rayne allowed herself to coast along the edges of the updrafts that came from the lava flows within the forest’s northern edge. Another eruption from the sun-scorched wastes of the Northern Reach had leaked its way into her village’s territory. It was her job to make sure that it stayed the expected path, and to activate the necessary preparations if the flows overwhelmed the stonewood’s tough, fire-resistant bark.

So far, so good. She tilted her wings, the wind catching in her bright orange primaries, and changed course to follow another flow. There were only a couple major branches of the lava’s path she hadn’t examined; the rest would soon be reaching the inner sections of the forest, where they would slow and cool into obsidian.

Something in the lava beneath her caught her eye, a strange dark shape bobbing along in the flow. She tilted herself down, angling her talons to catch a tree branch that hovered over the flow.

What was that, exactly?

She looked around, until she spotted a nearby root with a broken stick on it. Fluttering over, she picked it up in her beak and returned to her previous perch. The object, small, spherical, and black except for where the lava had caused it to glow a bright, crimson red, was floating by. She leaned down, getting as close to the lava as she could bear - she may have been a phoenix, but direct contact with molten rock was harmful even to her - and softly prodded at the object, pushing it through the lava until it lodged itself on a nearby shore.

The stick was smoking, the tip catching fire and melting into the rock. She dropped it, and grabbed another, hopping over to the stony ground next to the lava and pushing the object further, until it was finally free from the lava’s touch. It glowed red with heat for a few more seconds, before it finally began to cool, returning to a dark, ashy color.

She picked it up with one of her talons. It was still hot to the touch, but she was able to manage. It was just small enough to fit neatly into her talons, and from how heavy it was, she judged it was made out of a metallic substance, though she had never seen any metal that wouldn’t have melted within the lava’s embrace. Strange indentations covered its surface, giving her a better grip.

Whatever this was, it didn’t seem natural. An inkling appeared in her head, but she would need to get a closer look to confirm or deny anything.

Rayne spread her wings and flew up to a perch higher in the treetops, away from the direct blast of heat rising from the molten flow. She held up the object, and in the dim lights of Cerus and the sun on the horizon, she investigated.

As her talons moved about it, soot wiped away from its edges, and she thought she could detect hints of a silvery color shining through. It didn’t seem it was always this color, but that’s what floating down a river of lava would do to you. The strange indentations she saw had felt were symbols of some kind; ones she didn’t know the meaning of, but recognized. They were markings of the Ancients, makers of the ruins that were strewn about the moon. Very little was known about them; their language was indecipherable, and their ruins were old beyond imagining; so old that even in the days when the oldest spirit in her village was but a young kindle, they had been long, long since forgotten.

To her knowledge, all of the ruins within the twilight forests had been discovered, but there were likely plenty more in the inhospitable, borderline unexplorable Northern and Southern Reaches. Her gaze traveled north, towards the sun’s vantage point along the horizon, and the glowing mountain peak in the distance, burning furiously with the last of its magma. Was there something inside the volcano?