Chapter 435: Phoenix
The white tiger stood tall with clear black stripes decorating his body. His paws were covered in cloudy mists and every turn of his tail caused a mini gust of wind to form.
He also stood slightly more than three meters tall and his aura showed that his power level was somewhere between tier 6 and tier 7.
"You haven’t forgotten what Noel did to you?" Ma’abu asked, tilting his head in mockery.
"At this point, you all are just looking for a reason to complain.
If you were so grieved, you wouldn’t be standing here planning the downfall of your Chief with us," Ma’abu sneered in disdain.
The white tiger growled and bared his claws. White wind condensed around him to form mini cyclones.
Ma’abu didn’t react to this, he just smiled. The white tiger here may be stronger than him in terms of power level, but that didn’t mean he would win if they fought.
The power of Time coursed through Ma’abu’s veins, giving him confidence. Behind him, more than a hundred tier 6 lion kings looked at all this with disdain.
They didn’t put the tiger in their eyes at all, even considering him an inferior member of the Felines.
Of course, to any lion, any Feline was inferior to them.
"Look at you, already thinking of fighting when we haven’t even started working together," Victoria, the large serpentine-like dragon said.
"Ma’abu, Chen is clearly just being influenced by his hatred right now, don’t take his words to heart," The fiery phoenix spoke up too with a gentle voice.
Ma’abu scoffed, "To me? Or to your Chief?
I wasn’t the one who cut off your wings...
Ma’abu’s words stung like a bee sting, but they rang true.
Behind Chen, the white tiger, there were no wings despite him clearly being an Air Tiger.
If one checked beneath his fur coat, they would see the scars of ripped wings on his shoulders.
Powerful streams of air shot out of Chen’s nostrils, evidence of his rising anger.
"Chen, do you really want to waste our time here by fighting?" The last creature spoke.
The voice was calm and collected, it was the voice of someone stubborn and quiet at the same time.
The owner of the voice was a large tortoise, a large black tortoise at that.
His whole body, from the scales, to his rocky shell, was pure black.
Ma’abu leveled his gaze with the pitch black eyes of this creature. He knew the reason why the dragon, phoenix, and white tiger were here.
They all had some sort of grievance or bone to pick with a Primordial from their race. And they were deciding to channel that hatred and indignation into an ideology that called for the elimination of Primordials.
But Ma’abu did not understand the true motive of this tortoise as there was no history of him having any clash with a Primordial.
In fact, the turtle race currently doesn’t have any Primordial, not yet. It had been a very long time since they had a Primordial.
It was so long ago that many were beginning to wonder if they even had a Primordial at all
As far as Ma’abu was informed, the last Turtle Primordial appeared during the time of Silas the Peaceful.
"Adarii, thank you for coming," Ma’abu said while giving a nod.
The tortoise nodded his head too.
And with that, the meeting began.
The main topic of the discussion was not just Kael, even though Ma’abu was tempted to bring it up more often than the others liked.
They also talked about getting supporters, sponsors, activists, and possibly more civilizations.
As they conversed, Ma’abu silently went over the circumstances that led to each of these creatures accepting his invitation, besides Adarii who reached out to him first.
Chen, the white tiger was an Air Tiger, and a very powerful one.
Although Noel had almost wiped out the tigers because of his wrath, he had never been able to thoroughly finish the job. Hence, the tigers that had been in hiding eventually recovered after the years went by.
Naturally, the lions themselves were too busy rebuilding their civilization after the war and had no time to think of completely killing the tigers.
Besides, there were those annoying and mysterious Cats to be wary of.
The tigers rebuilt their civilization, although not to how it was during their peak days with Noel, it was still better than nothing with a functioning economy.
They currently had a Primordial Tiger and were still maintaining a low profile to not attract too much attention from their former bullies.
Ma’abu already knew of them a long time ago and had some space lions spy on them from time to time.
That was how he knew about Chen, one of the strongest fighters under the chief.
Chen had been a rising star, gifted in combat and sought after by their Primordial Tiger to be his aid.
Chen agreed for a while, but his exposure to the power and benefits of the Primordial filled him with greed and ambition.
So he challenged the Chief openly, declaring that he would defeat the Primordial to claim his position.
Chen had gone on about how the power of a Primordial should be transferred to those who were worthy. Ma’abu didn’t know where Chen got that idea from but it had intrigued him.
Alas, Chen was too full of himself and didn’t know how powerful the chief was. He was beaten badly and had his two wings ripped off.
Now, Chen walked through the society of the tigers with shame.
That was why he was here. He felt that all Primordials had advantages that made it unfair to the rest of their kind.
In truth, it was just deep envy, but Ma’abu was willing to make use of it like that.
The Phoenix on the other hand had a much sadder background.
Long ago, around the time of the nameless fourth Primordial Lion, there had been two races that came in contact with each other.
The peacocks and the foxes, they had started from the same Origin World.
At this time, both races were backward and didn’t have much of a civilization, they also didn’t have any Primordial at that time.
But it was already known what laws they were affiliated with. The foxes were affiliated with the Law of Fire and the peacocks were affiliated with the Law of Charm.
The foxes and the peacocks intermingled and were intelligent enough to generate attraction toward creatures of other races, especially with the humanoid forms making things very convenient for them.
For a period of time, right before the two races ventured out into the starry space, they had created a culture of having intercourse with partners from the other races as though it was normal.
If it were only one instance, it might not have been much of a big deal. But a whole class of foxes and peacocks were practicing this.
Hybrids were created. Some were more Fox than peacock, some were more peacock than fox.
And hybrids were generally abominations that found it hard to reproduce any offspring.
Seeing the strange appearances of the hybrids that they had created and their uncomfortable status, the Primordial fox and peacock that had then been born directed their races to leave them behind when migrating.
The foxes and peacocks took everything with them, leaving nothing but their home world for the hybrids.
The hybrids, abandoned by their ancestors, had no other place to turn to and no magic technology to leave the planet on their own.
The hybrids had to depend on themselves alone. After years and generations of continuous interbreeding, they finally evolved to their current form which was the phoenix.
The phoenix looked more like a bird and didn’t really have any distinct traits of a fox other than their eternally flaming body which was something the Primordial Fox was known to have.
The phoenix never forgot that they were abandoned by the foxes and the peacocks, never.
Their bodies constantly burned with mesmerizing fiery feathers, their numbers were low. They had power, yes, but that power felt like a curse.
They were so broken as a race biologically that the only way they could reproduce was to sacrifice themselves, burning their bodies to ashes so that one, or if they were lucky, two young phoenixes could take their place.
They were deprived of the privilege of watching their young grow, they were deprived of the privilege of having a normal body and a normal civilization.
And knowing that that decision had been made by the Primordials of that time had contributed to their wails against the foxes and peacocks.
The Phoenix did not seek the extinction of the two races, just the elimination of their Primordials.
They themselves had no Primordial Phoenix, they’ve never had one.
They had hope that maybe, just maybe, they could fix their race and rid themselves of The Burning.
It was sad.
"Elanor, are your people on board with you?" Ma’abu asked at the end of the meeting. He almost felt bad for enjoying the taste of phoenix blood juice in the past...
Almost.
Elanor, the phoenix, nodded her fiery bird head, "Most of them are on board with you Ma’abu,"
She was currently the strongest Phoenix of her race and the acting leader. If she made a decision, the rest of her kind would naturally follow.
Ma’abu nodded, "Good good, Victoria, we’ll be waiting for your move then," He said to the serpentine dragon that was already slithering away through the void.
"Yes, wait for US," Victoria responded without looking back.
The plan was ready, all that remained was ruthless execution.