Savior of Istara Read Online Free Page B

power and her life, she drove onward and upward through
Faltyr’s atmosphere. The Dragon Empress did not stop until she
reached the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space, for even a newly
christened Lord of the Dead needed oxygen to survive, unlike a
Dragon of Faltyr.
    With his final breath,
Ra’Tallah uttered a particularly vicious curse from the pages of
the Liber Inferum , sealing both their dooms as well as
ushering in the Cataclysm that ravaged our world and ended Faltyr’s
Golden Age.
    As they plummeted toward the
planet’s face, his spell drew in Aethyr energies existent in the
ambient universe to fuel its devastating effect, the separation of
the immortal soul from its mortal coil before the point of
death.
    The ruined airship burned
away during their meteoric reentry, leaving Ra’Tallah in the death
grip of his former queen. The damned lovers’ final fiery embrace
ended where their ascent began, on the field of their armies’
apocalyptic battle.
    Artemis and Ra’Tallah struck
with the explosive force of a thousand suns, annihilating not only
themselves and their remaining forces but sundering the Meshkenet
Mountains. In the wake of the mountain range, they left the
shifting, sinister Sands of Sorrow, commemorating the Cataclysm for
all time.
    The resulting shock wave
shook as many cities to rubble as it buried in sand and stone. And
titanic waves swept away entire civilizations, erasing them from
the next cycle of ages. After the home islands of the Nubari sank
beneath the sea along with the western half of Moor’Dru, the
winters became longer, colder, and darker than in the previous
cycle of ages.
    Although history failed to
attest to the success or failure of the Ireti devil’s final spell,
legends and prophecy have speculated on that nagging detail since
that dark day. Though I did not learn the answer during my
cataclysmic vision in Eresh’s House of the Dead, I came to know the
awful truth of the matter years later thanks to my association with
a certain calamitous mage from Moor’Dru.
    But that is another
story.

VI.
     
     
    I awoke slowly as if
emerging from a fortnight’s slumber, sore, stiffened, and drained
by the experience. Fleeting remnants of the vision induced by the
mural in the House of the Dead flickered on the backs of my heavy
eyelids.
    The priests of Eresh
wandered the eastern deserts and coasts of shattered Faltyr. Their
power had been restored as soon as Eresh reclaimed Her burgled book
from the fallen. And Her clergy set to work immediately, gathering
up the remains of the millions dead, processing them, and then
securely storing them away in bone repositories like those in
Istara.
    The apocalyptic vision faded
as I opened my eyelids, replaced by the bright light of the torches
ensconced along the walls of the familiar subterranean chamber. The
mummified members of Clan Viligotti surrounded me, watching
silently as the lone priest of Eresh had earlier.
    Serra was amongst them,
staring blankly at me from her coffin. I blinked back at her,
bewildered by my circumstances.
    Had it been but a dream?
Some cheap trick conjured by a contused mind? Something to steal my
time and sabotage my hope? How long had I wasted slumbering on the
floor of this crypt while my mother languished in a dungeon
awaiting execution?
    In the end, I wish it had
been some hobgoblin of the mind. But this isn’t that kind of story.
The reality was far worse.
    As I rose from the floor of
the catacombs, my eyes never left the face of my fallen friend. I
smiled wanly and then promptly stumbled over something lying at my
feet. As I pitched forward, I collided with Serra’s coffin,
upsetting it. It rocked backward violently, causing me to grab for
it. The heavy glass display case proved too much for me to leverage
from such an awkward position. Instead I managed to dash myself and
Serra to the unforgiving stone in spectacular fashion.
    We landed in a tangled
embrace of glass, blood, and bone dust. I never expected to