Wings Unbound

[Terra Dragona]

And so the seal had stood for centuries, long since concealed by the elements of time. Encrusted within it's earthen confines, the gate lay dormant. Decades gone one after another and with each fleeted moment the memories of this place had vacated from the minds of Man.

Man, charged with their fate to oversee the earth, did so. Did so for many lifetimes and generations of their frail race. Then, while tending His gardens, Man happened to discover the buried gate. Knowing it to be of divine origin, He cleared away the centuries and enshrined it, constructing a temple around it. For half a millennia more, He kept the artifact secret, worshiped it and fashioned His life around it - until the day came when He became learned enough to open the seal and yet foolish enough to attempt it.

Hundreds of pigeons lined the massive roof of an ornate temple, clucking and pecking one another as they sought to reclaim more of the sparse ledge space. Again, a single bird fluttered from the congested ridge, circled wide, and rejoined the throng. Below the ledge, decades of pigeon excrement streaked the stone surfaces gray and white. Statues of stone perched atop evenly spaced platforms protruded from the pigeon shelf. Each depicted a stone beast, four feet high and with membranous, bat-like wings.

Some of these stone beasts were dragon-like, others part man, part beast; still others were humanoid, yet primal in appearance. Some crouched with wings splayed, some with wings tucked and folded, and then there existed various combinations of the two. Details of the statues and their random posture were so lifelike they might have been living creatures frozen in stone. They thrust outward in all directions, lining the entire top of the temple.

The temple itself was notably primitive, comprised of irregular stone slabs hewn a thousand years earlier. Eroded engravings depicting flying demons covered the outer walls of the structure. The more plentiful of them was an icon of a dragon with splayed wings, wholly enclosed by three circles that shared a common center. Three arched entrances lined the temple face, the center arch standing higher than did those on either side of it. Three eight-foot stone carvings of winged lion-like beasts guarded the left edge of each of the arches. And engraved above each of the three arches, one of three distinct inscriptions lay inscribed - altogether, read right to left, rendering the completed passage: ‘Flying Dragon Temple.’

Manicured gardens surrounded the temple as humped bridges bowed back and forth across a slithering brook. Beyond the Bonsai trees and boulders of the inner garden, orchards of fruit and nut trees and small groves of hardwoods gave way to wilder mountain forests. On the fringe of those arranged gardens and untamed woods, a thrush perched in an ancient tree, filling the air with tranquil tones while midmorning sunlight dappled paths and pools.

Then, from the forest snaked a row of black-robed monks, moving solemnly down the stone walkway leading to the building. They drifted like mist down the path and with lowered heads and hands clasped before them; they filed silent as death would into the temple. Inside, countless candles burned on every horizontal surface, and the sweet smoke of incense spiraled from perforated canisters. Candles and incense combined to lend a thick air of spirituality to the atmosphere inside the temple walls. The silken monks moved through three consecutive chambers, each chamber larger than the one before it. The last of these was vast and its concave ceiling reached high above the priests. Etchings of flying beasts encircled the dome of the ceiling. Countless intersecting lines and inscriptions marked its curved surface, altogether appearing much like a detailed astrological map of the heavens.

In the center of the room, a perfectly symmetrical rounded hole lay cut into the polished floor. The pit was large, spanning nearly thirteen feet deep. Like the floor of the temple, the cylindrical wall of the hole was smooth and polished. From the center of the hole, fifteen feet below the temple floor, the stone seal stood. Even with the passing of sixty thousand years, the gatestone stood flawless and unspoiled even as the day it swallowed the Watchers and a great part of the heavens.

Four emaciated priests sat near the edge of the pit hole, with their legs folded and their robes pulled away from their shoulders to reveal narrow chests and thin arms. Outwardly, their decrepit condition served to confess of long periods of fasting. Sweat glistened on their necks and ribcages and their eyes burned in the bottoms of sunken sockets as they sat like statues, deep in meditation. The procession of monks circled the four priests, then seated themselves shoulder-to-shoulder to form a solid wall around the priests and the pit. As more monks joined in, they formed a second circle, and then a third, until three concentric rings of meditating holy men filled the chamber. In the deep silence, the occasional crackles from burning candles echoed through the dome as perhaps the sounds of thunder.

Soon three more priests entered the area. Two of the priests carried large candles and the third walked between them. This one was garbed in robes as red as fresh blood. He carried an ancient, scrolled parchment in his hands. The three stopped behind the circle of monks and the priest unrolled the scroll, upon which columns of writing lay revealed. The parchment contained translations of the verses that were inscribed on the surfaces of the gatestone.

Outside the temple, around its grounds, the only sound was the gurgling of the placid stream. The thrush took sudden flight, chasing a bee through the garden flowers. As the beak of the songbird snapped the bee from the air -

Boom! Instantly, the dome of the temple shattered, sending stone shards hundreds of feet into the air. The explosion was so fierce, it stripped the nearest trees naked of their leaves. Fragments of stone and human bones impaled their seared trunks. Enormous chunks of stone hailed down into the garden, snapping branches and pressing craters into the neatly raked earth. Billowing dust and ash raced over the grounds and rolled down the entire mountainside like a hyperactive pyroclastic cloud.

What was left of the temple glowed with furious heat, cracking the stones left standing. And still, the temperature climbed, until the sides of the smooth pit at the epicenter of the temple liquefied like seeping sap. The seared trees surrounding the temple burst into flame. The unscathed gatestone stood out from the center of the crater. The hole at the heart of the stone turned thickly opaque with a bilious black fog, which began to roil and fume, spilling out of the gatestone like a viscous caustic cloud. It was intense - dense as sulfurous gases.

The cloud rose from the crater and hugged the ground whilst it drifted beneath the lighter ash. It did not dissipate, but remained collected as a single boiling mass, blighting the garden greenery in its wake. Then, in an unscathed clearing, it stopped and churned in place for but a moment before rolling in on itself and coalescing at its center. Arcs of light flashed through it to resemble a thunderstorm as, deep within it, a form took shape. As a shadow, at first, it evolved to gather density and structure and then, finally flesh-tones. The cloud thinned to expose a nude woman with sprawling membranous wings. Her waste-length hair was red as crimson fire and fine as silk thread. Her eyes and nails were black as the gatestone face, contrasting a skin as pale as death. Her angelic beauty stood unmatched even by Eve herself. She was the Dragona and she was free.

Stretching the wings to an impossible breadth, she leapt and with a great sweep of her wings she took flight seeking to regain her destiny as it had been foretold eons past.

[Rakeesh]

Investigating the Temple Ruins had proven to be, more or less, a bust. Rakeesh mourned the loss of life, and prayed for the souls of the dead - yet, looking for clues had failed. It almost appeared as if a powerful mage had torn the place apart - but the indication of pattern in the destruction made Rakeesh's intuition say that this had almost been an escape, and not an intrusion. The vast devastation, though, was too great a feat for man, though - and he doubted that a mage powerful enough to do this would have much need for escaping.

No - the only thing he could do would be to continue searching for possible survivors, or witnesses. He would have to move fast - he had other problems on his mind as well, and they also needed tending to.

[Baphelocutis]

The leathery wings of the platinum draconian reached a little over ten meters wide in span when completely out-stretched in the apex of the sweeping motions of flying. The WarDrac of RhyDin when standing reached a towering height of four meters, but when slithering across the sky with a whipping tail flowing behind him his length seemed more like six to seven meters at times. As Baphelocutis was enjoying a little cruise through the sunny clouds one afternoon his attention was drastically diverted through his many senses of some great event that had occurred somewhere on the world of RhyDin. Normally, such beacons of power that happened to arouse his interest did not draw him to it beyond checking for any immediate danger to himself, but something about this occurrence piqued his attentions. The draconic creature that is part of his being was the one stimulated by the event. Deciding he should follow his natural instincts to explore something that might have involved his kind he turned in the direction he sensed it from and began flying in that direction cautiously.

[Terra Dragona]

Aloft on the currents arising from the devastation of her freedom she took a last glance to what was left of the temple the Men had kept her contained in, those that had gave themselves and what had been her home. No time for regrets she thought as she turned an ebony gaze outwards to the surrounding area and away from the destruction. Without an idea of why they brought her back, all she could do was go forward with a cautious stance. She would come back and sift through the wreckage at her first chance when things cooled down. She knew within her heart there were none of her Men left. Surely this would cause certain ones to seek out what had happened and she had no intentions of being caught at the scene.

With her rich red mane flowing out trailing between leathery wings she inhaled the breath of freedom. She could barely recall anything beyond her intrusions into this world other than what she was and why and she knew that she must find a place to rest to gather her mind. With her temple in ruins she would not find safety there and with ancient persecutions floating in the midst of her thoughts she set off to find suitable shelter. So muddled was her thinking from the destruction to her "friends", let alone the Men, that she failed to notice a larger shadow in the horizon behind her.

Gliding high she spied the fringes of a city and knew there must be a place for her within its walled boundaries that she could blend in with. Dropping to a less than gentle landing to the top of the nearest building she grunted at the exertions her flight had caused. "Need to get out more" she muttered to herself certain that no one could hear her as she rubbed at sore unworked shoulders. She couldnt have been more wrong.

"Hey you with the wings!" a Man's startled voice called out.

Turning a glance to the Man she knew there was no chance to hide from sight so she lowered her chin and dropped easily from the perch she had taken and spoke low to him, trying to make the sounds of his speech. "Hey, you" she mimicked and tucked her wings quickly down and out of sight, clasping a hand to the collar at her throat to hold them closed as they drew closer to enfold her body. His speech wasnt completely unfamiliar and was close to the murmurings of her Men that as she listened to him and she picked out the words well enough to communicate with him.

He didnt seem the least bit concerned about her appearance, to the contrary he seemed more curious about what she was doing there than what she was. The Man answered her questions of where they were and informed her yes, there was a need here and she should speak to the one that ran the place, the BossMan of the Outback. With a dip of her head in return to his, she would speak to this BossMan before the sun died that night and she warily followed him inside the building not knowing what to expect but on her guard at what she expected within the realm of these different Men that were not hers. With an acceptance that she didnt expect she was welcomed within the realms of these new Men. Perhaps there was something for her here.