Chapter Text
Joshua’s first kill had been an accident. It was during a walk home from work in the dark of late November when he had been attacked by a man with a knife who demanded his money. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and the sheer surprise of it had caused him to act without thinking. Phoenix fire had burst out from within him, engulfing the entire alleyway in flames along with the man who had attempted to rob him.
He should have fled the scene the moment it had happened, but he found himself unable to look away as the man howled in agony, the fire slowly blistering and charring his flesh until nothing but ash remained. It was horrific, and Joshua was sure the image would be burned onto his retinas, and that he would see it every time he closed his eyes until the day he died. He had never known such fear.
Or such pleasure.
Maybe that was the wrong word for it at this point. Catharsis was perhaps more accurate. Despite the more rational part of his conscience thinking only of how terrible the consequences for this might be if he was caught, a small part of him felt a glorious kind of relief that had come from releasing so much power and from taking revenge against the man who had wronged him. It was a slim and twisted sort of silver lining, but it was there none the less and not too small a feeling that Joshua didn’t notice it.
He went home and tried his best to forget about the whole thing, but the incident was quickly reported on by the local news network the next day and Joshua realised that this was never going to be something he could put behind him.
Man found dead last night in scorched alleyway. Arson resulting in manslaughter suspected. Read the bulletin which scrolled across the screen while a reporter stood outside the area, which was now blocked off by yellow police tape, and discussed what little the police had uncovered so far from the scene.
“Gods…That area isn’t too far from here,” Clive murmured as the two of them were watching the TV together over breakfast that morning.
Joshua stayed silent.
His second kill was less of an accident. A few weeks had passed since the first, and life since then had somehow continued on as normal for a while. The police had seemingly decided that the man killed in the alley was an arsonist who had ended up paying for his crimes with a mistake of his own doing. It was a neat little story which would satisfy the questions of the public, and had Joshua been fully sane, he could have gone on to live life without ever facing the consequences of this.
But he wasn’t. He knew deep in his mind that something was wrong with him as he began to change his route home from work every evening, taking different and darker paths in the secret hope that something similar might happen again. It wasn’t because he wanted to kill anyone again, he told himself. It was just that he needed to practice controlling his flames so that if he were ever to get jumped again, he would be able to do just enough damage to escape without actually causing anyone any long-term harm.
It was a long time before he ever found himself in any danger though. Working as an assistant in a research library which stayed open until late at night meant that by the time he walked home on weekdays, the streets were mostly abandoned. Still, he imagined that there would be at least a few shady characters out and about at this time of night, maybe a drug dealer or a violent drunk or two, but it seemed that such people were hard to come across when deliberately looking for them.
After several weeks of taking ridiculously convoluted and detour-filled routes home, he did eventually run into someone, but it was too dark in the unlit underpass to see their face. Whoever they were, Joshua never found out. They had been the first sign of human life he’d seen in days on his walks home and as if he might never get another chance, he reacted too fast before he was even able to get a good look at them.
Flames engulfed the area, scorching all but Joshua himself. Posters which had been pasted up onto the walls peeled and burned away. Littered cigarette ends and soda cans on the ground practically vaporized in an instant. Anything which dared to exist there was destroyed, including the person who had just been walking by – Joshua’s second victim.
He hadn’t meant to kill again, he told himself over and over in his head. This was another accident. Yes, he had gone out of his way to find someone to test his strength on, but he had never meant for this to happen. He was a good person. He was sure he was a good person!
So then why did it feel so good letting another human being burn to death? Where had this strange sense of relief and power and freedom come from, and why was he feeling this way after having done something which should have resulted in nothing but shame and guilt?
To say that Joshua struggled with himself for a while after this was an understatement. He cried himself to sleep several nights in a row while also fantasising about doing it all again. He began watching true crime shows in attempt to convince himself that he was different from those criminals on TV, but he ended up spending far too much time sympathising with how the killers had felt in the moment compared to the victims.
He thought about killing himself. One last murder to put an end to the monster he had become.
But he couldn’t do it. Even when the news started reporting on the second incident, he knew he couldn’t just take the easy way out. He had Clive to live for. He loved his brother more than anyone else in the world, and he couldn’t leave him alone to fend for himself when the two of them were already struggling to pay rent on their shared apartment with both of their humble salaries combined.
So instead he began searching for answers. It was a good thing he worked in a library, he supposed, since it allowed him to easily spend his lunch breaks looking at all the various books and articles relating to criminal psychology. He made sure to cover his tracks though just to be sure that nobody wondered why he was suddenly so interested in such topics and became suspicious. He would sneak books in the pockets of his jacket to take into the bathroom to read where no one would see, and when looking through the library’s article database, he would make sure to log in using a guest account so that his searches wouldn’t be traced back to him.
He spent days pouring over every recourse he could find, but nothing was providing him with any clues about why he had suddenly become this way. He found various cases of murderers who had seemed like ordinary people to those around them, but had actually been showing warning signs long before committing their crimes. Joshua tried to think of anything he had ever done in his past which could have been a red flag, but nothing came to mind. Unlike those he read about, he had always been extremely empathetic and cared a great deal for those around him, and that was still the case, so he found himself lost for a real explanation.
All of this self-hatred and the feeling that he had no one to confide in had put him in what was perhaps the worst mental state he had ever experienced, save for when his father had passed. But if there was one small blessing to come from all if this, it was that he began to realise that walking in the dark no longer scared him. He always used to feel a little on edge on his journey home, always checking behind him every now and then to ensure he wasn’t being followed, but by now he knew that it was everybody else who ought to be afraid of him. He took what little comfort he could from that.
As more time passed, he decided to change the direction of his search for answers and moved instead to researching the Phoenix. He had thought he knew everything there was to know about it, having been aware since birth that he was its dominant, but perhaps there was something he’d missed when learning about it as a child.
Children were tested by blood when they were born to see if they bore any kind of deity-given power. Clive’s test had shown feint signs of something unrecognizable by the doctors at the time, but was ultimately written off as powerless, while Joshua’s test on the other hand had of course revealed him to be the dominant of the Phoenix, which pleased his mother greatly as a member of the Church of Eikons. She had constantly fed him the stories of the phoenix from the scriptures as he grew up and put a lot of pressure on him to act in a way that was befitting of the sacred creature.
He thought he was done with all that religious literature once he’d moved out with Clive, but apparently not. The library held many books about all of the Eikons and it was in one such volume that Joshua finally found something which, at least to him, gave some semblance of an explanation.
The Phoenix is the ruler over life and death and sees to it that the balance of both is maintained. The good shall find themselves rewarded in its healing flame, while the bad who disrupt life’s balance by spreading death shall face the fires of punishment.
Had the Phoenix been acting through Joshua to punish those it considered evil? Was this the reason why killing felt so good, because it was the Phoenix’s own satisfaction that he was feeling? He chose to believe that this was the case, and for the first time in the past couple of months, he found himself finally able to relax a little. This wasn’t his fault. It was the will of nature. Everything was fine.
Joshua’s third kill was entirely premeditated. He had tried to stop thinking about it now that he had settled on his excuse for his previous crimes, but the more he tried to ignore it, the stronger the urge to kill once more became. It kept him awake at night to the point where he was certain that giving in would be the only way he could ever get a good night’s sleep again.
So he chose a victim: a librarian by the name of Cyril who had been a little too interested in Joshua’s lunch break research sessions. Despite his best attempts to keep his reading secret, Cyril had noticed and asked questions. Innocent questions which Joshua had been able to brush off easily, but since he was planning to kill someone anyway, he decided he might as well choose the one person who could have been suspicious of him.
Killing him almost felt too easy. Once the library had closed for the day, Joshua followed Cyril from a distance as he made his way home. He knew the librarian’s route from a time when he had once gone out of his way to help him carry a large number of books from his home to the library, and in between those places was a small park which Cyril used as a shortcut. It was there that Joshua planned to strike.
The park was closed this late at night but getting inside was a simple task. Joshua watched from the other side of the street as Cyril squeezed through a narrow opening in the fence and then waited a few minutes before following him inside.
There were no streetlights here, and from this short distance Cyril appeared as little more than a shadow in the inky darkness of his surroundings. Insignificant kindling. He reached the centre of the park and Joshua prepared his attack, summoning fire in the palm of his hand.
The sudden sound of the crackling flames seemed to catch Cyril’s attention, and he spun around to look behind him.
“Who’s there?” The nervousness in his voice ought to have made Joshua feel bad for what he was about to do, but instead it sent an excited shiver down his spine.
“The Phoenix,” he replied, and then set the park ablaze.
It was euphoric. That was the only word Joshua could think of to describe it. He watched with twisted delight as the flames licked at Cyril’s skin. Every howl of pain was like music to his ears. The sulphurous scent of burning flesh which filled the air did nothing to deter him and he soon found himself having to cover his own mouth with one hand to stop himself from laughing too loud.
Any fear he had once felt while causing such destruction was long gone now, replaced only by intoxicating gratification. He felt as though he would be happy to sit and watch the man burn for eternity, but this moment was short lived as he began to notice lights turning on in the windows of the houses which surrounded the park. People were clearly being woken up by Cyril’s screams and someone was bound to call the fire brigade and the police once they looked outside and saw the flames.
So reluctantly he ran. He dashed for the hole in the fence and slipped through it as quickly as he could before absconding from the scene all together. He barely took notice of his surroundings on his sprint home, instead focusing on the image of Cyril burning on repeat in his mind. How he wished he could have stayed longer to witness the end of it. Had he used a different method, something much less noticeable than a wildfire, he might have been able to take his time. As he finally got home and locked the front door behind him, the thoughts of potentially getting caught for this were greatly overshadowed by ponderings of other ways he would love to try killing.
Superintendent Barnabas Tharmr took a long drag from his cigar as he appraised the scene; a once green park now reduced to black ashes with a scorched skeleton in its centre. This was not the work of a mere arsonist, that much was certain. The detectives reasonable for investigating the last two scenes of this nature had been fools to think that was the case.
“Harbard, have your men collect the bones and send them off for DNA testing. Then get back to the station and check the database for any known individuals in the city who have been blessed by an Eikon of fire,” he said, motioning for his second in command to hold out his hand.
“Right away, sir,” Chief Inspector Harbard replied, allowing Barnabas to put out his cigar in his palm before leaving to do as he had been ordered.
The next morning Joshua and Clive sat down to watch the local news over breakfast just as they always did. It was no surprise that the events of last night were the first thing to be discussed, and Joshua had to try very hard to keep his expression neutral as the damage he had caused was shown on screen. He crossed his legs and ate another spoonful of cereal.
He should have been feeling nervous since it was surely only a matter of time before the rest of the library staff noticed that Cyril was absent from work with no explanation and would report him as missing, and then he would definitely be questioned by the police as one of the last people who had seen him. Somehow despite this, he felt strangely calm. It was as though nobody could touch him now that he had fully embraced his powers and his murderous nature.
Clive turned to him, eyes full of concern. “You know, Joshua, you ought to be careful when you come back from work at night. These cases keep happening closer and closer to home and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Joshua blinked. He was always so used to being the anxious one between them that it hadn’t occurred to him that Clive would be worried about his safety. Would it put his mind at ease to know that he had nothing to fear, to be told that neither of them were going to be hurt because it was Joshua who had been responsible for these attacks all along?
It wouldn’t be an easy pill to swallow, to learn that his brother was a murderer, that was for sure. Joshua knew that his brother loved him though, and would no doubt help provide him with an alibi when the police inevitably came knocking. Clive had always been a terrible liar, but as long as Joshua made sure to tell him what to say before hand, then that wouldn’t be a problem. Not to mention the fact that he was sick of keeping quiet. He needed to tell someone before he went crazy from the pressure of keeping it a secret and who better than the one person to whom he could tell everything?
So he made up his mind.
“Clive,” he said, gently placing his hands over his brother’s reassuringly. “You don’t have to worry. The one who’s been doing all of this, burning people to death – it’s me.”