Prologue

The fires spread a hundred miles in every direction. Forests, mountains, fields, streams, towns, farms, entire cities were engulfed in unceasing, unforgiving, unquenchable flame. Red and orange tongues fell from the sky swallowing all that lay below. Stone cracked in the heat, plants turned black as they withered away. In the city of Arnow buildings simply toppled in place. The pillars of the Czars palace broke near their bases before slumping to the side dropping the marble roof of the ancient building. Paved streets rose up in a thousand shattered pieces, the wood of the serf’s homes was eaten away by the hungry crimson demons as they devoured all in sight regardless of its history, its ownership, its sanctity. Nothing could stop Mage Fyre. Not on this scale.

Above the country of Krovia the sky was dark, but not with clouds, not with smoke. Ten thousand airships of every size flew over the ancient kingdom. Some large frigates requiring ten separate balloons to keep the hull afloat, some small family owned dinghies from the mountains. All were filled to the brim. The entire population of Krovia flew above their nation as it burned. They watched four thousand years of culture, of history, burn away into caked blackness.

Upon the vessels the people wept. Mothers held onto children, husbands onto wives. The tears poured forth freely without abandon. They had naught but the clothes on their backs and one another. A few families had brought sacks filled with their belongings some jut spare clothes. Mostly the sacks were empty filled just with what they could grab in the mere seconds they had before being ushered aboard the evacuation ships.

The Mages stood at the gunwales, clad in their varying cuts of black robes each with a red insignia upon the left shoulder, their hands out-stretched they unleashed torrents of white-hot flame gushing forth from their palms. Down, down they fell consuming all that lay beneath them, a terrible rage unleashed upon the earth.

An entire kingdom burned away beneath the mages, by their will; but the people whose homes they had destroyed, whose livelihoods they had stolen, made no move to stop them. These people, who had had everything that they, their forefathers, and their forefathers’ forefathers had achieved burned away. Those responsible stood not three feet away, teetering on the edge of the gunwales a thousand feet in the air. It would be so simple to gain their vengeance, so easy to send the fire throwers into the very hell they had created. But they did not move.

Not from fear, not from shock. They felt no ill toward these people. They desired no vengeance. On the contrary they loved these men and women in their black robes and cloaks. They were their saviors, their heroes, their staunchest protectors. They burned away not homes, not farms, not history. They burned away the blackest plague that had ever consumed humanity. They burned away the shadows of the abyss and saved from their vile clutches the innocent people of Krovia. They burned the Sorn.

Next Chapter: Something Wicked