There it was, that familiar, briefest moment of cold that came with death. Just a small, miniscule space between breaths where death reached out with her lovely hands and caressed Kennethâ€™s soul before being driven away by fire. He didnâ€™t like to talk about the fact that he rather liked dying; he was a thing of heat, rage, pride, and fire, but a touch of cool caress was something he was often without. It was one of the few luxuries he could not simply buy.<br/><br/>It was fleeting, of course, like many things in his immortal life. He was a constant defined by brief bursts of flame. So, it was time to let his soul sing with the birdâ€™s fire. He heard a word, gallows; heâ€™d tried that before, it hadnâ€™t done anything beyond act as tinder for a larger fire.<br/><br/>And so, the only momentarily fallen body of Kenneth Hughes had just enough time to lay still before the wound began to roar with flame, the heat growing more and more unbearable as the hole grew larger, the flame rolled forth in a torrent of hungry wisps of plasma. Kenneth screamed; it always hurt too much to not scream, as fire rolled up his throat and lungs. He felt his skin bubble and char as he rose on a cushion of hot air. He flung his arms wide as they disintegrated, rolling wings of flame taking their place. Over his scream came a shrill, sharp cry like that of a hawk as the fire took on the final shape of the phoenix, aloft in the room and spreading flame up wall panels and along carpets with every moment. Finally, with a mighty flap of its wings, a ball of heat rolled through the room as a gust of hot wind.<br/><br/>Kenneth would sleep now, and wait his turn. The fire would feed.<br/><br/>The two guards still clutching onto Mathis were nearly lifted into the air as he raised his arms towards the phoenix. They released him in an attempt to escape unhindered, only to find that he had established a rather strong and unrelenting grip upon their arms himself. Slowly and in spite of all resistance, he pulled them back and forced them to face the horror he had awakened.<br/><br/>"Tell me before you die, men of Colen. Is the sight before you not more<span style="font-style: italic">majestic</span>than your weakling monarch?"<br/><br/>Both men simply screamed. Not out of terror or fury, but from the sensation of their entire bodies being immolated from the inside out as they stared at the phoenix's burning visage. Mathis himself was not spared the same fate, though he regarded his own burning hands with little more than mild dissatisfaction even as they disintegrated before his eyes, which quickly followed afterwards.<br/><br/>That screaming, much like Kennethâ€™s own, was something of a minor annoyance that the phoenix had learned to tolerate in its immense, infinite power. It was hungry for more to burn, and it screeched out a cry that send a wave of flame down the kingâ€™s table, boiling drinks and charring foodstuffs and paperwork as the king was hurriedly shoved out of the way by a valiant guard that probably thought he was doing his kingdom a great service. He screeched again and rolled forward on a surge of flame and hot air.<br/><br/>No prey would evade his hunger. So he would chase this king through his palace, and it would all burn. Then, with luck, the city. But if the phoenix had its way, it would all burn; the world would reveal itself as the wretched little cinder it deserved to be. Perhaps fat city folk would burn hotter than the skinny peasants that Kenneth ruled over, as relatively happy as they were.  His flaming talons ground the writhing, charred corpse of that one valiant guard into the smoldering floor as he turned to storm down the hallway after the king.<br/><br/>It would all burn.