Phoenix Designs

Reading Order of High Breed Descriptions:

Rucee and Daniel: [link]
Toby Anchorman and Mitzi Little: [link]
The Falbourne Family: [link]
Wes Harrison: [link]
Serenity: [link]
Hewitt “Boney” Whittle: [link]
Stewart Walker: [link]
Flint Harrison: [link]
Tessa Ettechild: [link]
The Harrison Family: [link]
Nan: [link]
Franklin Ellis: [link]
Hog: [link]
The Wells Family: [link]

General High Breed Update:

This is it! The last one! I'm now done with this project and can move onto other things.

I'm sorry that this has dragged on for almost half a year now. I definitely didn't intend for that to be the case and wanted it to be over with much quicker. But at the same time, this thing has been hanging over my head for years, so now that it's finally done I feel that I have a bit more freedom. Hopefully things will get more interesting from here on out, especially if you're watching me for Professor Layton fan art.

So, without further ado, the last character.

Phoenix

On the left is Phoenix's child design and on the right is his adult design.

I've basically put him off until last, because his story is a huge, sprawling mess and it was easier to tell it through the other characters, so that if I miss something off here by mistake then it's probably already been covered in another description.

Right, so in the beginning there were a bunch of dimensions all tightly packed together. Two entities were formed to make sure that the barriers between those dimensions stayed strong. One was a being that lived inside of the barriers and the other was a being that lived inside the dimensions. The latter of these was a creature who adopted the name Boney. Boney was basically placed in the most influencial dimension, taking on the form of either a creature that had the most influence in society or else a creature who it was most convenient for him to be at the time. He had no control over his placement or form, something that increasingly frustrated him and caused him to make his form look generally malnourished and go against the social norm.

Anyway, because the dimensions were so tightly compressed, the barriers were weaker in some places. Over time, some Amirians discovered a hole into another dimension that was seemingly uninhabited. They ran a few experiments that resulted in them being able to stabilise travel to the dimension and realise that if they blew it up it both wouldn't affect their own dimension and would somehow reform itself over a matter of years.

They saw this as a brilliant place to exile their unwanted hybrid citizens to and would use the dimension to kill them off every couple of decades without anyone knowing. But because of how frequently they travelled between dimensions, the barriers became weaker still. Panicking, the being from inside of barriers felt that it needed to take on a form to communicate with the offending parties and hopefully stop this from happening.

But unlike Boney, this being was never actually meant to have a form and had no idea where to start. It ended up in what had been dubbed as the hybrid dimension, in the body of a phoenix child. Because of its lack of knowledge about creatures, it had no idea that a phoenix probably wasn't the best choice of form to take.

Regardless, the boy was found by Nan, who took him in and simply gave him the name Phoenix. He was raised alongside some other children in Nan's care, becoming good friends with them. And seeing as it happened “before he was born”, he never remembered who he was originally or why he had come here. All he knew was that he was friends with Rucee, Daniel and Serenity, Nan was his mummy and it was all good.

Around this time, Boney was changed into the form of Hewitt Whittle, and granted the knowledge that he needed to befriend Wes, who would become close to Phoenix and therefore make it easier for Boney to communicate with him. Boney basically ignored this knowledge and went back to work.

So everything was all good up until the time that the Amirians chose to detonate the hybrid dimension as part of their annual routine. To do this, they actually had to come into the dimension for a short time and while there were spotted by the children, who warned the others. The hybrids pursued these soldiers, not knowing where they were going but feeling it would not bode well. However, for this exact reason, the detonator had been placed in a cave near an active volcano, as the heat was intended to deter any hybrids who might think to explore it. All of the soldiers were composed of animals who weren't so concerned about the heat, whereas the only two of the hybrids (Rucee and Phoenix) had this time of resistance.

Against his better judgement, Hog sent the two of them in to follow the soldiers. Once inside, the duo found out what was going on and with much difficulty sabotaged the detonator, without activating it. Without any further orders, the soldiers were forced to retreat, but then ran into the hybrids who (after being told what was going on from the children) sent them packing and said that if they wanted to blow them up they first had to get past them.

Knowing that the hybrids would be cautious from now on, the Amirians decided to leave it a few more years before they attempted another detonation.

Time went on and the kids became teenagers. One day, Phoenix accidentally fell through different weakened barrier and ended up in the land of Oranaro, where he met Tobias, Mitzi and Tessa. At first he couldn't get back through the barrier and had to stay with them for a while, as Tessa looked into opening the gaps manually. During this time he began to date Mitzi and continued to do so once the barrier was fixed. Mitzi and Toby escorted him home and stayed there for sometime, until eventually Phoenix's relationship with Mitzi fell apart due to him not understand how her culture views relationships (see Toby & Mitzi's description). After this the Oranarians returned home.

It was also around this time that Phoenix became estranged from Serenity and decided to focus more heavily on the Amirians. He knew now that creating barrier gaps yourself was possible and if the Amirians figured this out (instead of just using the gaps they found that were already there), they could pretty much try to blow up the hybrids from anywhere at any time.

Using the knowledge that Tessa provided, he and Rucee eventually managed to make their own opening to a small city in Amiria and travelled there to assess how easy it would be to launch a warning attack on them. Their discussions were overheard by a gazelle called Wes, who then saw it as his duty to inform the government about this upcoming assault (more on that in Wes's description). He wasn't believed though, but that didn't matter when it turned out he was right – the hybrids did indeed attack the Amirians. But their army was small and unprepared, so they didn't last very long. They retreated soon after Nan died taking a hit to protect Phoenix. This wounded the troop's morale too much for them to continue.

However, a second attack happened sometime afterwards, led by a more prepared band of hybrids. This second war hurt Amiria deeply, so King Bernard ordered for the hybrid dimension to be detonated at all costs. This happened, killing any hybrids who had stayed there and not fought in the war, but not without being witnessed by Wes, who had the foresight to record the event on his phone.

Not being very technical, Wes gave the footage to his nephew Boney, who made it go viral and become public knowledge. The Royal Court was disgraced and were forced not to act against the remaining hybrid soldiers left in Amiria. Nobody quite knew what to do with the hybrids for a while after that and the hybrids didn't even know what to do with themselves either, as most of them were hit by the depression of having lost many who they were close to in the explosion.

Phoenix abandoned them and hid away for sometime, not able to cope with the fact that so many people had died for something that he had essentially provoked to happen. Months later he was found by Wes, who slapped some sense into him and made him go to face the music.

Through a strange twist in fate, that music ended up being a political marriage to Queen Mirim. The tensions between hybrids and purebreds were threatening to resurface and since Phoenix was viewed as being the leader of the hybrids, showing him and Mirim wed was intended to show peace between the two. This obviously forced marriage didn't fool many, but it seemed to suffice for a little while. Phoenix would spend most of his time with Wes and would only attend formal royal meetings if asked.

During this time, the Amirians discovered Oranaro and since Phoenix was already familiar with the place he was sent to deal with the person who the Amirians had dubbed as its ambassador – Toby. Despite being as surprised about this choice as everyone else, Toby was glad that the position meant that he and Mitzi would mend the damage between them and their old friends. Serenity even went on to move to an Oranarian city called Carrac, as she felt more comfortable with their culture than she did with Amiria's.

Things began to settle for a while, but during some routine research Tessa started to notice strange creatures out in the Tunnut Ocean that surrounded Oranaro. These creatures didn't match any of the local wildlife and died quite quickly. Concerned about this, she enlisted Phoenix and Wes to accompany Mitzi, Toby, Serenity and herself in travelling out into the further reaches of the ocean to study them. During this trip, they discovered that the creatures were coming through another gap that led to a different dimension. The environment in Oranaro was wrong for these creatures, causing them to die so quickly. But despite their best efforts, the group could not close the gap.

Once they return home, Boney goes “By the way, I know stuff” and basically gives them the exposition he's been building up to over the course of the story. He says that the barriers will only weaken still with the combination of them being used frequently and Phoenix not being there to keep them stable any more. And while they'd been lucky enough so far that the three dimensions connecting to each other all had similar atmospheres, meaning that the residents of one could survive in the others, this would not continue to be the case. More dimensions would cross over and people within them might die due to the accidental travel. Eventually, the barriers would break entirely and each of the dimensions would collapse onto each other and be unable to cope, probably causing their demise.

The only way to fix this would be for dimensional travel to stop entirely and for Phoenix to go back inside the barriers.

For a while, the group talk about this and with a heavy heart decide they had to do what was best. Tessa forces all of the gaps closed, with the help of Boney who informs her of where they are. Serenity opts to stay in Oranaro, resigning to the fact that she'll never see Rucee, Daniel or any of her other friends again. Boney has to stay in Amiria, but things are finally getting interesting there politically, so he doesn't much mind. Wes chooses to go with Phoenix. Phoenix tells Wes not to do so, as living beings have never existed inside the barrier and he'll probably die if he goes there. Even if he does survive, Phoenix would not be Phoenix as he knows him and simply be the entity that watches over the barriers between dimensions. But Wes says he doesn't care about this, as Phoenix somehow ended up accidentally becoming his whole life – he has no ties to the Harrisons now, never knew his birth family (especially since it turned out Boney was a fraud) and never made any lasting relations with any of the others. Even if he wouldn't survive, he wanted to go with Phoenix, so that Phoenix wouldn't be alone.

The story ends with them leaving together. We never find out what happens to Wes, but there is a brief epilogue showing how everything had been coping after the gaps in the barriers were sealed. The hybrids were finally granted equal right under the rule of Amelia and Malcolm, Oranaro benefited from being its own society and all of the remaining characters get on with their lives happily.

And that's it. The story that I'm never going to write. At this point I honestly don't even know what High Breed is, not something that I'll look back on fondly (sadly). But it's over now and I feel better that it is.