A Gathering of Dragons

But then came the day that Minestus was killed.

As soon as his demise was learned, the most powerful dragons of Minestus' Circle swept down upon his ruined lair. There were five dragons in total that came to that darkened cave beneath the earth.

The wicked looking dragon who's scales shone like burnished bronze was Moreau. The trip from her island home in Tol Nostra, the great inland lake of Ryngard, to Minestus' Peak in the foothills of the Goth Mountains was a fairly short one, but she had not been the first to arrive.

The black skinned dragon, Meclandru, took that honor. Like a raging storm he had risen up from his faraway home in the southern jungles near Nom Malbra and thundered across the skies to Minestus' lair. Meclandru was smaller and younger than Moreau, but in no way less fierce. Red tinged smoke belched from his snout as he stared at the cold husk of Minestus and the need for revenge burned within his heart. Meclandru was Minestus' protege and the destruction of his master filled him with a ravenous rage.

The third dragon of this evil company was yet another black dragon, but this one was not so young nor so hot-blooded. Morgithus he was called and he hailed from the Valley of the Black Stone, a terror haunted land found near the westernmost reaches of Ryngard. Morgithus studied the scene of destruction before him with a calculating eye. He felt no anger, or any passion at all, as he gazed at the two burned and battered and broken bodies lying sprawled on the ground. He was somewhat surprised though. Not by the fact that Malachi had finally attacked Minestus, but that Minestus had actually been killed. That Malachi died in the attack was to be expected of course; regardless of her pretensions she had never been in the same league as the great Minestus. But how did she sneak past Minestus' defenses? How did she manage to actually hurt him to the death? Morgithus wondered about these things coldly, logically. But what was uppermost in his mind was something else completely, something much more important -- with Minestus dead who would take his place as leader of the Circle?

The fourth dragon that had arrived made her abode in the Karpathia - those mountains that divided the lands of Havnheim from the Desert of Arabi. She was slimmer than the others and her silver scales seemed to glow with an inner light. Her name was Sylena and she did not hide the fact that her attentions were focused less on the two dead dragons at her feet than on the living ones that stood about her.

The final dragon in this darksome tableau was Sythabus. This bronze giant had a hungry look and indeed he was quite lean and gaunt. His scaly skin was stretched tight over his bony frame and his bat-like wings had a tattered, wind-swept quality, which was quite fitting considering he lived deep in the Calamari Desert.

And so these were the dragons that had come together in the wake of Minestus' death. But what were they going to do next?

1. The Dragon Circle must go on, but...

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