The Phoenix's Legion

It's been five years since the second battle of the Rovahn walls was won, winter had passed and humanity continued to rebuild their lives or at least what little life could be salvaged. The rebuilding of the Rovahn walls was an impossible task, the lands of Rovahn where vulnerable to attack yet the vampires never retaliated. Many things had happened in the great battle, comrades where lost, old alliances were reformed and many of our heroes had changed greatly. Kiva, a former member of the hellboken crew, had become cold and cruel, she never bothered to reunite with her comrades, she had committed herself to the west and even took up a subordinate named Gunslinger. Kill-shot had been fully exonerated of his crimes and was given a seat on the royal council, he took Ragna as his right hand man, Thomas had become the head of the legions science division. Drago spent most of his days caring for his brother who in the last five years had not woken from his coma.

Kazuya had become his father's second and aided the dragon creed to unify with the eastern lands, although the walls were gone the military strength of the legion had greatly strengthened and with many of Rovahns people eager to aid the legion, the number of soldiers, Knights and magi had greatly swelled. After five long years the king had ordered a secret meeting to discuss many of the troubling occurrences that had been taking place as well as to discuss the legions next course of action. The only people who were invited and actually knew about this meeting was king Titus, prince Drago, Threant, Hunter, Kill-shot, Ryoko and his second, Kazuya. Commander Madmar and commander Dante were also present as well as Bellarabi and his new second, Tessa.

Threant: "my brothers I thank you all for attending this meeting, Kill-shot I know you weren't happy excluding Ragna from this meeting but I assure you it will all make sense soon enough".

King Titus: "before we begin allow me to introduce you all to a late entry to this meeting"

From the shadows a skinny high borne noble with a shaved head had joined the secret gathering, he was quite old and weak looking, he clearly wasn't a fighter but from his straight posture and clothing he was obviously a wealthy man.

King Titus: "this is sir Edward, the elected representative of the lesser clans, with all the man power and soldiers they provided they demanded that no more secrets would be kept from them and seeing as how they are hundreds of lesser clans, Edward here shall stand for them, he is of equal importance as the rest of us and his authority shall be respected"

Edward: "well said my king and seeing as how we are all here I suppose we may start with the most pressing issue, when does the legion intend to mass produce the cursed arms that had worked so well against the vampires."

Bellarabi: "those weapons are too dangerous to be mass produced, only warriors of the highest discipline and self-control may use them."

Edward: "so you wish for my soldiers to use weaker weapons whilst your army slayers keep the good weapons and armour for themselves!!!"

Thomas: "the armour can't be massed produced because there only exist on power source that can use it, after the battle the armour continued to change form, now the damn thing won't let anyone near it but me, there is a lot about my super armour that I am yet to discover. As if the armour's transformation wasn't enough I have been having dreams of a battle among creatures I have never seen before."

Threant: "not here Thomas, soon but not here."

Drago: "consider what the cursed weapon did to my brother, you know mass production is out of the question, how can we offer weapons that could harm its wielders?"

Bellarabi: "lord Edward I understand your concerns but you must understand that the weapons can easily influence the wielder, when I witnessed the death of my sister it took over my mind and turned me into a mad dog, even after killing Lorcan I nearly killed my other sibling, kiva."

Threant: "the weapons are being improved thanks to the aid of the green devil Dante and Madmar had brought in, he has been unable to regain his memories but his intelligence and knowledge of the black well has been most useful but even with improvement we cannot be careless with selecting individual's worthy of the cursed arms."

Hunter: "good, the one you gave me made me relieve my memories of the first Rovahn wall battle."

Dante: "mine just got s.u.c.k.e.d into my steel arm and it hasn't surfaced since."

Madmar: "mine made me see my mother, she demanded that I cut my hair."

Edward: "fine, clearly the weapons are a threat both to our enemies and to our own soldiers."

Threant: "wow, you are a smart one"

King Titus: "then I suppose we can ask the more concerning questions, like what do we know about the kidnapping of the oracle rose as well as the disappearance of her protector Boremont."

Threant: "well if we pay attention to the description of the shadow being that took her we can clearly see that it matches the description of the creature that approached Madmar in his time of captivity. Small towns have had a few witnesses that swear seeing creature of the same make."

Madmar: "so what happened in the caves wasn't just my mind playing tricks on me?"

Threant: "no, in fact it's safe to assume that we may be dealing with an enemy that we are yet to understand. Their sightings are random and each shadow carries unique and distinct features and qualities so we are not dealing with a single being but possibly an entire unknown race. The only constant is this hooded man with the tattooed arms but his just as much a mystery and a ghost as the shadow people."

Drago: "shadow people?"

Threant: "I had to call them something."

Bellarabi: "and as for lord Boremont it would seem that he did in fact ascend to the skies, reports from the dragon creed confirm that on the same day of the incident a strange light had appeared in the sky levitating a single person and sent him beyond earths skies."

Edward: "how exactly does the creed no of this? Or to be straight to the point how did you witness this?"

Ryoko: "we know this because we were hovering above the silver caves."

Edward: "so you traitors have been spying on us this whole time!!!"

Titus: "enough!!! I will not tolerate such outbursts Edward; we are here to resolve not to reopen already healed wounds."

Edward: "with all due respect my king but the way I see it none of you in this room has any answers about these shadow people, now I have been patient these last five years but now I demand to know why, why did the dragon creed return to us after so long."

Ryoko: "because I swore to honour this meeting I will excuse your disobedient tone but make no mistake dog, the next insult to the creed will bring the end of your days and the whole of Rovahn will witness me carrying your severed head as a trophy."

Kazuya: "you always did have a talent for silencing people."

Ryoko: "for years the creed has used the great dragon to fly over all the conflict the surface brings, on our glorious ship we lived in peace, giving us plenty of time to strengthen our forces, we obviously succeeded even when my sons abandoned their people."

Hunter: "perhaps we shouldn't speak of…"

Ryoko: "my eldest son Kyoji? He may have been my son but he lost all right to claim my love, I never mourned him and I honestly hold no grudges towards your king for killing that damn outcast, the only reason I tolerate my second son is simply because of his ability and nothing more."

Dante: "maybe this room will be less tense if we stuck to the point."

Threant: "agreed."

Ryoko: "very well, you see the great dragon uses the dark cloud as power source, as long as it existed the great dragon would forever fly."

Kill-shot: "so you turned humanities greatest weakness into your strength and kept it all for yourself, still not seeing why you bothered to come back seeing as how you clearly didn't need to"

Ryoko: "honestly we never would have returned if it wasn't for the disturbing development with the dark cloud"

Titus: "what disturbing development?"

Ryoko: "you see the destructive and unstable power is what we harness so that the great dragon can fly but one day that power had weakened and stabilized, the dark cloud is starting to sustain itself."

Threant: "that can't be, the nightmare tower Lilith created fuels the dark cloud, it only exists because she constantly feeds it, it can't self-sustain!!!"

Ryoko: "oh but it can, once the cloud stabilizes itself Lilith won't need to feed the damn thing and the most power magic user on earth will be free to do with the human race as she sees fit, it's no secret how great her hatred for humanity is."

Titus: "if that monster is set lose on us she'll lay waste to the legion and the creed, she was impossible to beat, my great grandfather described her as an unstoppable force of magic, the legion only held her off because we were many and we had the sun but as we are now."

Drago: "we don't stand a chance against her, Raziel is powerful but at least he understood the need for human existence but Lilith doesn't seem to care about feeding on blood, she just wants us out of the way, every single one of us, her hatred is absolute."

Ryoko: "it's good to see that even the youth understand the situation."

Edward: "well!!! If such danger is coming for me… I mean us!!! Then how do we stop this from happening?"

Threant: "isn't it obvious, we must navigate the black ocean, return to the land of the immortals and destroy the nightmare tower before the dark cloud stabilizes."

Edward: "…. have you lost your mind!!! We're talking about the land of the vampires, your victory in the wall battle has clearly fuelled your hubris, can you imagine the terror you would unleash on us? Forget Lilith and forget a Kali whose pride has no doubt been wounded by defeat, what of their king? If we attack the vampires home then we would be provoking the absolute wrath of Raziel, why risk it? Why should we spit on the mercy he has shown us or do you expect me to believe that we haven't been attacked by vampires in the last five years because they got scared or maybe the forgot we exist!!!?"

Dante: "I am one of the most powerful magi the phoenix legion has and yet my power doesn't come close to Lilith's, if we do nothing we will be weakened forever but if we destroy the tower, we can regain our true strength."

Thomas: "repairing the cosmic flow in the process."

Everyone in the room: "what?"

Thomas: "nothing, carry on."

Edward: "my king you turned Rovahn into a shield for your people and it preserved the human race, I beg of you, don't condemn us to the wrath of Raziel, please my king, please!"

Ryoko: "silence dog, we must raise an army to attack the vampires but we cannot attack what we do not know, we must regain our knowledge of the vampire kingdom before we attack and just in case you were all wondering, the dark cloud will stabilize in approximately ten years."

Edward: "your saying this now!!"

Titus: "silence!!! Ryoko what exactly do you have in mind?"

Ryoko: "over the years we have successfully captured vampires that apparently had a habit of roaming the black ocean, we carried out experiments on them and the magi of the creed had discovered a new stealth tool to use against the vampires, show them boy."

Kazuya had presented the meeting five purple stones with an odd and ominous liquid inside of them.

Threant: "what the heck are those"

Kazuya: "we don't have a name for them but the stones have the ability to turn humans into vampires."

Edward: "are you mad? why would we want to start breeding vampires."

Kazuya: "well to put it more accurately, the stones put its user in a vampire body, a perfect an undetectable camouflage."

Threant: "that could work, that might just work!!!"

Titus: "if we gave these stones to skilled stealth soldiers, we could infiltrate the vampire lands and weaken them from the inside."

Threant: "not to mention all the information we could gather, if you let me have these stones I could grant them additional powers that would allow us to communicate with our operatives undetected."

Kill-shot: "I could go, as well as gunslinger and two other soldiers from the dragon creed, am sure you have a few ninjas that would jump at the opportunity."

Ryoko: "as a matter of fact I do."

Kill-shot: "Ragna will be the fifth man, he may appear loud but in our days in the hellboken crew he was involved in many stealth missions, he should be a part of this."

Threant: "no he won't."

Ryoko: "I have heard good things about this Ragna and I would love for Kill-shot to lead this mission, why shouldn't he be included."

Kill-shot: "I also wish to know; why can't he join a mission that he is well qualified for? Why wasn't he a part of this meeting? Answer me damn it, why has my second been denied a sit on the table?

Threant: "because I have a mission for Ragna and it is one he must take alone."

Bellarabi: "what mission?"

Threant: "the infiltration of the Saber brotherhood"

Titus: "what is this saber brotherhood?"

Threant: "in order to understand this I must tell you all I have learned about our dear Ragna"

Threant has readied everyone in the secret meeting of what he has learned about Ragna but what could this knowledge tell the legion and dragon creed about this brotherhood? The mystery of Ragna has finally began to clear, Threant presents a giant book with notes of what he has learned of Ragan, a suicide mission is in the makes, another battle fiercer than the battle of the Rovahn walls fast approaches and the shadow that has hidden Ragna's origins is about to be lifted.