>>5830753True to form, Testa came through, bringing you a date before long, wheedled out with the ineffable mysteries of female friendship and Testa’s own undeniable force of personality: Izzy’s birthday was mid-autumn, apparently, nearly a year away.
“Perfect,” you murmured. “A graduation present as well, then.”
“What are you getting her?” Testa asked, then brought a hand to her little mouth beneath her wide eyes. “Oh gods, a RING??”
You gave her a withering look, but gave nothing else up—save a thank you present, a commitment to let her plan the party which you connived to convene… And a promise that, IF you were to HYPOTHETICALLY marry Izirina Henzler (as Testa was adamant was imminent, in spite of all your protestations), she could be a Maid of Honour.
(Realistically, she and Izzy WERE surprisingly close…)
Shaking off the silly notion, you began considering how best to break the good (?) news to Izirina, and also considering if there was a way to pass this ‘gift’ on as more than mere knowledge—which, after all, was the inevitable end-goal your dear friend would doggedly pursue from the moment she learned of <Free Movement>. However, your efforts in this regard would be… Interrupted.
You see, that was the year everything changed, and the Age of Dragons began.
The first harbinger was a knight, clad all in green. He was the heir of the House of Yosef, and he was the talk of all the town. You recognize the name from your researches into Tower history, for it was his family—one of the most prestigious in all the Paladin King’s aegis, who had helped to fund the Mages’ College in ages before the ivory spire for which it was now named. The armour he wore—decorated eerily with effigies of dead and ying green dragons—was said to be an inheritance from one of the very first Paladin King’s pledge-knights, commissioned to commemorate the fall of the very dragon whose mortal remains were now housed below the Tower, one layer below your own sleeping-quarters, and from whose blood you had revitalized Hershy. And when he came…
He brought proof.
When Sir Yosef appeared in Hawksong, he came dragging a strange creature, or so they as: a lizardman, yet not like those savage and piratical brutes who preyed upon the southeastern seas and coastline. Rather, it was a finer, more sophisticated creature… And it had been disguised as a human.
And then he found more. One here, hidden as a school-teacher. Another there, a filing clerk. Others were suspected: a town guard, or a librarian, or a dance tutor, or a housekeeper. Where the green Knights et his dread gaze, people went missing—fled or, perhaps, outed, captured, and disappeared into the Paladin King’s dungeons.
