Six Rivers Kingdom - The Phoenix King

Waking Up

Aerabella woke with a start. She shook her head and tried to push back the memory of that night. She wanted nothing more than for it to have been a nightmare but the fact was it happened. Her family was dead and her life was effectively over. The heat had been her regenerating. It was a h3ll of a way to find out you can't actually die. Now she lived in constant fear and pain.

Aerabella sat up on the cold bench and stretched. this was one of the rare mornings she woke up on her own and alone. this wouldn't last long. The new king always had experiments to run after all.

Her body was riddled with what she called "death scars". Any injury that only cause pain and not death would heal and scar like normal, but once she went through a regeneration, would dissappear. Her death scars, however, were the scars of wounds that caused her death. Those remained no matter how many times she regenerated. she had ones that were rings around limbs from having them chopped off, she had a bunch on her neck that blead together to look like one scar from being stick like a pig, but one place she didn't have scars was on her face. the new king liked his "toys" to remain pretty, and before the end of her father's reign, Aerabella had indeed been the most beautiful girl in the kingdom. An unnatural beauty with red hair and perfect pale skin and big round green eyes the color of fresh spring grass. Her sisters were shaping up to be very similar, only they had white blonde hair and eyes as blue as the sky.

Aerabella brushed across the worst of the scars. the one on her chest. The first scar. she was naked and the king never gave her clothing anymore because her regeneration always burned them off, so her scars were always on display. she had gotten into a habit of tracing them but she would stroke the one by her heart the most. She still had the body of a 14 year old even though she had been locked here for almost 30 years now. The king had found a way to stay young using her blood, and every few days would bleed her dry. On the days he didn't he would experiment, torture and kill her in other ways. The more she fought it, the longer he would torture her before ultimately killing her. The torture was the worst part. his favorite thing to do was pin her arms against the wall and brand her until she fell unconscious. What happened after that she never knew, but he would always let her wake up and suffer in pain before he killed her. Aerabellas whole body would be cracked and bleeding and sore from the torture. The one Aerabella hated most though was when he would cut her all over her body until she blead to death. He would tie her and hang her from the ceiling and use a knife to slice along her ribs and stomach. the last cut always left a scar.

Aerabella caught herself daydreaming of a time before all of this. Suddenly the king entered her cell and he didn't even wait or mess around with her. 'He must be mad' she thought as the huge spiked mace collided with her temple. just before everything went black she thought 'this is the first time he has hit my face.' before she was fully unconscious she heard the new king say.

"Your father thinks he has bested me, but we will see who has the last laugh."