Stonevale Beach

Trogdor glided over the ocean. He had left his home continent in disobedience to the clan in order to reclaim what rightfully belonged to the dragons. Gold and riches. As a young whelp Trogdor and his family had been driven away from the human's continent and many of his kind had been killed. Now, an adult 60 ft tall and competent in his use of magic, Trogdor returned for revenge.

The humans, naive to their puniness, had started wars over land and wealth, attempting to claim it all for their selves. The dragons during that time, being religious fools, had tried to keep the peace. Then, instead of truly fighting when the humans turned on them, the dragons had fled the land because it was the will of Lo. What nonsense.

Trogdor would teach the puny humans a lesson. He would show them which race was the strongest and deserved to rule. He would bath the cities of man in fire and burninate the country side. Soon his brethren would follow him across the seas and join him...then the Age of Dragons would begin.

Ahead and below him the land was coming into sight. The city of Stonevale sat on the coast waiting for him. Tired after his long flight Trogdor did not have the energy to ravish the city, but he could give them a taste of his power and make his demands. Beginning to fly in a spiral Trogdor drew upon his mana source. He summoned the winds to his body and started to form a tornado. The viscous winds would soon suck up the ocean starting a water cyclone. Trogdor had used much of him mana in the flight and thus was not capable of summoning a full hurricane, but that would come later. The dragon roared his name, "TROGDOR!" Letting himself be known.

    "Back so soon? I am quite disappointed... you will only make them stronger."
    Dissonance and concord, an impossible synergy, filled every carefully measured decibel of that deep and stately voice--a voice to be perceived only by the massive dragon approaching from over the high seas, and one without clearly discernible origin at first. Trogdor might instantly sense a competitive pull in the local mana, one that held unyielding in defiance of Stonevale's powerful newcomer.

    To the dragon, the voice seemed to swell, to fill the sea air from every direction, reverberating off of invisible barriers and rebounding at the creature in flight with redoubled potency. The sound seemed to coalesce, losing definition, collapsing into a crackling cacophony of indecipherable noise that took on physical dimension as a single brightly glowing point atop a natural stone lookout over the Stonevale beach, and without warning that point instantly expanded into a nebulous, searingly radiant mist that quickly condensed into the form of a spidery man.
    Quicksilver eyes sought the beast's with immeasurable deliberance; one slight, calloused thumb rose to hooks strands of inky black behind one round and wholly human ear as thin, windburnt lips warped into a gracefully disinterested smile. He seemed to sympathize with the dragon, with whom he shared a strange and almost symbiotic empathy.
    "Ah... you are quite angry, aren't you," he murmured in an offhand sort of way. With that, his expression exacerbated, smile deepening into what could only be called a grin of good humored cruelty. Fingers, long willowy things, their thinness belying an intense wiry strength, flexed with a creek of supple black leather, mantled shoulders rolling with a rattle as his jointed spaulders clicked in and out of place. The faint ocean breeze that the beast began to manipulate rustled through the billowing hem of his onyx great coat and the tips of his long mane, both becoming long ribbons of roiling darkness that lent him a distinctly phantasmic air. A single saya of Katashima origin dangled from his left hip; a tomb of black lacquered ironwood, the world's faithful guardian and shield against the untold cruelty of the thing bound within its ominous, swept length.
    That darkling gaze drifted towards where the tornado was soon to form, and his eyes lit with a fresh peal of unvoiced laughter.
    "I'm not sure I can even begin to convey the futility of unleashing that whirlwind."

    And then, the world seemed to stutter... to pause and regard him with fresh, frightened intrigue as the end of that dragon's breath ejected from each nostril in two billowing columns of inky black--like gouts of coal smoke--that lazily curled out towards the heavens. The setting sun, the sky, they seemed to grey, to darken with a sullen apathy as the wind sharpened inexplicably, becoming icy palms that slapped the cheeks of bystanders... that stripped leaves from trees and tore the life from torches and lanterns around. Then it was still; the wind died with frightening certainty, leaving leaves to drop straight to the ground like slowed stones, as if an environmental void had enveloped the scene, imposing its deafening silence on the Dragon and the mysterious being before him.

    "Who? I am the God of this world, couldn't you tell? They call me the 'Burning Spirit,' Lord of all Man." A lie so casually, flippantly posed, one might be hard pressed not to think he seriously believed what he'd just said. An inky brow leapt upwards with Mephistophelian contempt, his smile remaining wholly unchanged and unpitying beneath.
    "Perhaps it might be best, my friend, if you do not toy with the hand of fate." The alabaster column of his leanly muscled neck contorted rather oddly as he rolled his head from side to side--as though stretching was actually necessary--and in doing so splashed the twilight curtain of his dark tresses over the better part of his wan features and deceptively slender shoulders. In a rather offhanded motion his left hand, driven by a flicking flourish, swept upwards with fingers splayed to present his palm to the standoffish beast--and the palm was bare, the fabric of the glove cut away there and at the tip of each spindly digit. An array of hauntingly alien figures, noneuclidian geometries and contorted glyphic figures, were inked into exposed skin, each line and arc beginning a subtle and inexplicable movement; the entire epigram seemed to be writhing and twisting, as though struggling furiously to tear itself free of his flesh.

    That jagged gash that was his weathered mouth contorted into a slight sneer as what seemed to be electromagnetic waves rippled from the undulating, pulsing vortex of lines and ribbons crisscrossing his palm, morphing themselves into a spherical phenomena around his now statuesque cloaked figure. Rippling waves, like those streaming off sun-baked concrete, began to grow in intensity, eventually affecting the air itself; the wreaking scent of ozone, of oxygen shedding spare electrons, soon inundated the stale and salty air as the black jet of fire flowed around him like water upon rock, soon dissipating as the fire's effect faded.
    The magus would turn abruptly on a heel and begin on his way with a wistful chuckle, the sky and the air returning to its previous state, as if life and all of its sounds carried on a sudden sea breeze had returned with a merciful breath to what must have been the terrified denizens of the almost-doomed town.

William sat as his apprentices rowed the small boat to shore. The captain of the small trading vessel had been very helpful in his services. William wish all the blessings of the seven paths upon the good captain before leaving. The boat slid on stone and william was the first to disembark, not caring that his robes got wet. "Pull the boat above the high tide line." Said the priest.

William wore nothing besides a plain brown robe and a black ring. His eyes were white and obviously blind, yet the priest moved with the grace of a dancer. His lack of vision impaired him not at all. He carried himself with the absolute confidence that can only be gained by someone who can see their own destiny.

"First we check in with the High Priest." Said William as his entourage joined him. "Then we begin our search for Shaun. That fools should have checked in days ago."

Here, artisans began work on a statue. When finished, it would depict Lord Zephidel atop the same precipice from which he faced Trogdor, his arm outstretched with an air of almost exaggeratedly proud resistance. At its base was a plaque, which read:

Jill walked along the beach, passing the statue. She looked to it for a moment in admiration, and then to the castle of Goraia. Atop it was a spire, and hovering above that was a brilliantly glowing red orb. She and everyone else knew this as the Orb of Judgment--and today was a special day, one in which crowds gathered in such public venues, including Jill herself, to witness quite a spectacle.

Today, there was to be a scheduled test and demonstration of the Orb of Judgment's power.