Choice

Silence lay over the long forgotten Phoenician temple. Once gleaming walls and towering ceilings crumble away and erode away with each passing year, month, week, day, hour, minute, second. Windows, stained in the phoenix colors would on a sunny day cast light about in crimson-gold beams, the interior of every temple containing the statue of a glass phoenix with which the light would reflect through slits in the walls set at the ceiling. Today though, these windows lay in pieces on the floor, the light slits to the ceiling providing weak wall foundation allowing the roof to cave in to the floor, and let the rain freely pour through out the temple. The stone pews would lay crushed, some snapped in two as if hit by something, others just eroded down from years of torturous water. This was a place where the rain never quit, but always got worse, only lightening up only on the finest days to a small sprinkle. This was not one of those days. Water cascaded in angry fits toward the heart on this day, leaving nothing out of its path and soaking the earth to only a muddy substance around the temple.

Only on this note would something change from any other day out of the year for the past two thousand years of this temple. No mortal being would see it until it would have been to late for them. The rain, undisturbed by his presence, would change in no way at all, pouring its might to ground around his shoulders and neck, soaking William completely through. He walked ever so slowly through the air, but his movements were not human, almost as if to look at him would be to look at a static TV signal. Stopping at the alter, he would look up, his shoulder length hair hanging limply from his skull then fading away some, then returning to focus, "So..This is your choice." The words came with no lip movement, sounding as if they were coming from a distant tunnel.

"Yes." Clear and crisp, cutting over the rain, William would actually say, "I should have left this world a long time ago. You take care of the others, and make sure not to let any of them out. Your stronger then I am anyway."

He would step forward now, putting his hands out, standing just before the alter. Chanting lightly under his breath, Williams body would glow a light blue. The glow would continue until his body were engulfed in it, the blue light surrounded by white. The blue fading away, the white disappearing, and William would be gone forever. In his place stands a new tall man. White hair would hang down to his waist, resting on the jacket of Williams. Skin as pale as paper would be visible along his face and hands. A set of eyes would stare out at the sky, purple with a crimson circle bisecting his iris. His face, rather handsome without scar or any blemish, would twist into a smile as he allowed himself to relax into a normal standing position, "So...Back again....It would appear that I can't die." As he spoke, the clouds in the sky would start to spin, twirling around him in a funnel cloud. Reaching down, they would engulf his body for a second, then rise up into the air, revealing a dazzling white trench coat with matching boots and gloves, already on Alex’s body. The rain would cease, the clouds dispersing to reveal an astonishingly blue sky, a rainbow jutting overhead with the last rain drops hitting the ground.

"And now, for one more change..." A hand would dive down to his left, pulling out a sword, sheath and all, from the inside of his jacket. Pulling the sword out, a lash of a fire whip would release, a tremendous explosion resounding through the air as the sodium and gunpowder hit the air. Had he been human, Alex would have been blown out of existence. But as he was not human, this was irrelevant. Using his vampiric reflexes, he would avoid the explosion, now on the other side of the alter with the sword gleaming before. Stainless steel infused with mana strings. "William, you little devil you..." Pulling sword over his head with his right hand, his left would gather his hair around the length of his shoulders, "For you...."

A glint of steel and a pass of a hand over the alter, and Alex would slowly walk away from the temple as the silvery white strands caught up in the wind and blew out into nothing.