by Thomas Riddell

Created on: May 31, 2008

Rhuel was a hawk-faced man. His hooked nose very much made him look like a bird of prey. He worked feverishly in his well-lit laboratory. The sickly sweet aroma of this room could mean only one thing, alchemy. He quickly stirred a beaker of yellow liquid and with the other hand he carefully added a single drop of blue elixir from a small metal vial. He was rewarded with a tiny puff of green smoke as the entire mixture darkened from yellow to green and then turned clear. He kept stirring for a few more moments and then deftly slammed a lid on his concoction and placed it on a stand over a small flame. Just as urgently he spun to a desk littered with papers and parchments. Somehow in the clutter he found exactly what he was looking for, a small book bound with a leather cord. He undid the cord and flipped to a blank page, eager to record his latest findings.

The light in this room emanated from wall sconces but instead of torches or candles there were coolly glowing balls of light. This was likely less hazardous than open flame given the highly flammable and explosive nature of many of the substances in the room. The room itself had no windows and two doors, one on either end of the lab. One was closed and barred from the inside and the other was standing ajar.

The alchemist finished his writing and slumped into his once opulent chair. He mused to himself, "How will it all end?" He thought about the days before the Fall when he was a star pupil at the Academy of Nerrit. That was a continent away, in another lifetime. He was supposed to do great things. Now he was scarcely more than a common criminal. As an unbound practitioner of the arts he was viewed as a fugitive from the Quorum's law.

The Academy of Nerrit had always been the most prestigious of the nine colleges and the most permissive in its teachings. Thus, it was the first targeted by the Quorum. The offer was simple - submit to and swear fealty to the Quorum or be destroyed. The faculty, of course, refused and they paid the price, as did the majority of the students.

In their arrogance they saw no way that the army of a few thousand men could hope to best a conglomeration of the most powerful and the best trained spell casters in the land. Then the monsters came, and they kept coming. When it looked like the tide of monsters had been turned the dragons appeared in the sky. How the Quorum managed to gain control of the ancient beasts was still a mystery. When word of Nerrit's destruction spread to the other

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