Roar of the Elemental Feather: Part One

In the dark of night, when the stars twinkled gently above Jamaa, there was but a darkness scheming near the Mira Statue.
A phantom held a small, glistening stone in its grip, the glow coming off of it almost identical to the subtle corona enveloping the Mira Statue. Copper and crystal reached for each other through bushes, yet the phantom wasn't focused on this phenomenon.
Hours before, the Phantom King, vile as he was, had told his minion about this particular stone and how it was relevant to their plans.
"This is a stone Cosmo once possessed, but while he was traveling and fighting dear Abigail, we took it from his home and have since experimented with it." the rattling hiss of the king repeated in the minion's head. "It has the soul of Mira within it, embedded while she tries to regain power. Although she is now too powerful to simply destroy the statue, and she is beyond the point of recovering from enchantments at this state, I trust you that this plan will work. You are worthy enough, minion, but do not think I praise you in any way. If you fail, I'll send the elite Troopers to execrate you."
The phantom nervously flipped through its mental memory of the spell it had to cast. The King assured it that the spell was foolproof, yet the Phantom was worried that the spell would fail, it'd be discovered, both, or the spell backfired and launched a volley of cannibal enchiladas at it while it warbled "Geryon-yeeha!"
As the last of the night owl Jamaasians trickled out of Jamaa Township.the city yawning alongside their open maws, the phantom, his black pupil bouncing around his white eyeball to check for any witnesses, slunk out of the brush. Leaves fell around his dark, gooey body as he made a face with his eye at some rainbow goo somebody left behind, probably from Brady's filthy lab set. That Twoleg scientist's concoctions ranged from brilliant to decent to oh-my-Zios-I'm-going-to-hurl, probably because he was more of an animal researcher invited by Mira (just like Tierney Thys), not a chemist.
Unfortunately, the Phantom had to slosh through some of the latter concoction, feeling the sticky and warm liquid grope at its skin.
Every leaf blowing around the corner was a prying eye to the phantom, every creak of Jam Mart Clothing's ancient door was a gasp by a bystander, every rustling sticky note on the bulletin board a growl of animosity from a Jamaasian Hero. Although the silence of the once-lively city was untouched and blessed, the Phantom couldn't help but shudder at every substantial noise, polluting the air further with its untimely musk.
After what should've been a minute but was fifteen, the night gave way to the sparkling, shimmering statue of Mother Sky herself, as if a partition were being swiftly removed by invisible hands.
"Zooks.." muttered the phantom, so mesmerized it came out as barely a whisper.
The spread wings of Mira seemed to carry promise of a great land of hope, as the forces of Light strove for, the closed eyes emanating serenity, her copper and turquoise feathers individually breathtaking, her legs bent and claws closed as if a slippery fish were being held in it. Her arched neck and round head seemed to be as sharp as a dagger, yet compassionate and forgiving at the same time. On its pedestal were weathered engraved bronze words reading "MIRA, MOTHER OF EVERYTHING IN JAMAA."
Although millenia of graffiti covered it, her shrine's marble columns still stood tale and pale, crumbling yet venerable. The arches seemed to let in positive energies, the vines all thriving as if life itself bled from Mira, the cobblestones very chipped yet as sturdy as an old tree.
A fleck of dust hit the Phantom's black skin, jolting it back to reality.
"Hello, nameless phantom, wake up, I'm getting bored of you just float there. Seriously, do you fart rainbows like Nyan Cat? No? Then wake up!" it seemed to chide.
The night started to brighten, and to the Phantom's horror, the noise of the day before slowly but surely began to revive itself as yawning Jamaasians trickled back into the Township to advertise their events or to simply wake up. It felt the spirit of Jamaa Township begin to awaken alongside them in leaps and strides.
The phantom's seven tentacles started to undulate in panic, while the eighth held up an opaque yellow stone as if to present it to the side of Mira's body, and began to chant nervously.(The phantom, not the tentacle. Should I whack you with a sword repeatedly to make your IQ go up?) The stone had appeared out of thin air, either pooped out by the air or summoned from the Duat.
Probably the latter.
As the phases of the incantation lapsed by, a persistent, blue and white fire grew inside the stone, first an ember, then a flame, then an inferno licking at the sides of the stone, clamoring to escape, to devour everything in its path...
No.
This flame was controlled.
Mira was the goddess of order, peace, in a way, the anti-Apophis. Although Zios did not originally intend for Mira to be the anti-Apophis, she now essentially was.
From the chest of the statue, a blue orb emerged with a droning humming sound, a light twinkling from within. A cool breeze swept over the Township, and from the clouds above, a beam of light spotlighted the levitating orb, specks of energy peeling off of its exterior.
Sweat of black goo dripped down the brow of the Phantom as the spell Cosmo searched for unfolded before it.
Cracks of purple energy not unlike a boomseed boulder's spread across the orb, and larger flakes of the orb came off like eggshell pieces, revealing a blinding white light from within. From the orb spread holographic wings that resembled Mira's, yet were transparent, had flecks of every color of the rainbow dancing within it, and were tipped with a faint yellow glow.
BASHIIING!
Blinding light coming from the orb radiated outward like a shockwave of sheer energy (which it was), inducing the growl of thunder high above. Lightning struck the Mira Statue, sending up clouds of dust. A bonfire of light enveloped the entire shrine, sending the few Jamaasians nearby in wonder, confusion and shock. The very spirit of the Township seemed to hold its breath.
When the dust finally settled, the statue was still standing as the legendary bane of the Phantoms, but the corona was now gone, marking the statue as a normal artifact to even the most impaired. The shrine still buzzed with the life of Jamaa, the magical veins of the Duat still branching out from Mira's power, but no longer did all of her power stay in the statue.
Like a blot of ichor, the golden blood of immortals, cracked, blackened glass had formed around the statue, as if Jamaa had shattered in those moments of wonder and shrunk to wrap around the pedestal.
Where the phantom had been, a shallow crater doted with evaporating time energy drops smoked, the smoke billowing up before dissipating.
Apparently, the Jamaasians would be wondering what had happened for a while.
Where the orb once had been, a white wolf stood, intertwining marks on its fur glowing with power, and a  mysterious pink scar running over its eye, as if its very being had been scarred, not just its pelt.
The wolf took flight.

Evada was training with Greely and her friends when the terrible news arrived.
She had had a rough day, since traveling through the Duat (and ending up in the Phantom Vortex twice for no apparent reason) had been harder than anticipated, since Apophis was growing in power and his magical presence was messing up her power. When they'd finally arrived at the Alpha Hut, though, mid-walk to the Alpha Hut, Pink had collapsed suddenly, and they'd had to lug her the rest of the way frantically.
Cosmo had taken Pink into his custody after winking at Evada, and afterwards, Lisa had deployed them for some "enrichment training", aka "Let's Go Beat Up Straw Dummies" day. By Lisa's stern and weary face, Evada'd guessed that the Phantoms were growing in power, destroying some of the last safe havens outside of the borders, and that Pink was in a critical condition but she didn't want her comrades to know.
So, she'd been forced to stand outside in the sweltering heat (which she suspected Greely'd made just for their personal torture) for hours, training to make avatars of Miroza, Mira, Zilch and Zios to overcome various obstacles, using Twoleg weapons to impale dummies like shish-kebobs, and cast various spells that ranged from elemental tricks to cheese-throwing.
Evada quickly learned that cheese-throwing was an art to fear and admire when Tempest had nailed her with a large slice of cheese that exploded in her face.
Just when she wanted to scream out loud, two things came out in the form of the words of the grim-faced Marco, who'd stepped outside the hut to break the news.
First of all, a powerful entity had been spotted flying from the wreckage of some explosion at Jamaa Township, flying towards the Forgotten Valley, estimated to be headed towards the Mira Temple - and Ekrol, a mysterious rogue buck.
Evada's throat had went dry when that news had arrived.
But even worse, more personal news had arrived.
Pink was dead, taken by her illness.
Matilda and Gleam had nuzzled Evada with their scaled snouts, apparently fresh from baths that Harper personally had given them, but the shock quickly formed into thoughts even without their warmth.
She'd witnessed Pink unwillingly slay Savior, one of Pink's best friends, and seen the coffin go into the deep Duat, never to be seen again. Although Pink's cyborg parts and her organic parts had been warring for quite a while, she'd hidden her pain, misery and desperation for a cure. Evada had heard her friend moaning inside her room, cursing Frost and her assumed "friends" for everything that had gone wrong in a while.
It wasn't right, but she knew that bitterness had been Pink's only true supplement, seclusion her only true drink. She'd lived on the power of hatred, bitterness, grudges and tears to keep her going... until now.
She suspected that the illness, alongside the backlash of her hatred and the grief of losing Savior, had killed Pink in the end. Evada knew that Pink would probably rest in peace even though she'd died of her own "supplements", judged by Moon the Wise and purified where her "friend", Snow, had been cleansed, then sent to a ethereal paradise in the Land of the Dead where she'd party forever and be revered by generations of ghosts to come. She knew that the horrible fate of roaming the world as a Core, maybe a Prelate if you were lucky, probably wouldn't fall on Pink's shoulders.
But "probably" wouldn't be enough in the world of Jamaa.
Waves of worry lapped against Evada's heart as she concentrated on improving her own skills instead of repeating Pink's grief over Savior, although lopping off straw heads provided little comfort for the cold claws of freshly reaped death.
She would never think of Pink again after that.