Information fled into his mind as if conscious thought spoke to him through the wood. The dragons were dying by the score. Dökkálfar and men close to the base of a cliff. None took flight except for a mighty beast, hewn in black, spewing fire across the hordes below. On they came like a raging inferno blown by the winds.

These were the sacred grounds where dragon kind came to die. The Black was the Keeper and inflamed by wrath at the intrusion. Melted flesh drooled across the fields, and still, they came. Riders hacked from their Wyverns as arrows fell like rain. If only they had taken flight, then the massacre would be to the intruders. But they refused. Not here; this was the ground of their ancestors.

Upon their dead bones, did these serpents cast away life, corralled against cliffs that stood for millennia? The Black soared in circles until exhaustion incapacitated its flight. From a watch den high up on the cliff wall, did it see its kind butchered? The blood of dragons flows like water. The Elder Mages fled to a portal resting at the mountain’s base.

Too few remained to be effective now. Delalande felt eyes rest upon him. The Black knew of him. They are coming, Scribe. Know this, my kind is dead because of them.