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PROLOGUE:
Even through his fur and raiment, the frigid winds of the Shiverpeaks cut Ragnar Bleedingblade to the bone. The Charr legionnaire drew his cloak over his brown-furred feline head as he turned to address the motley crew of five other Charr trailing behind him. Like Ragnar, each of the Charr males stood at about a human male and a half's height, though their hunched posture rendered their visage feral and stout. Each Charr had four horns and four ears on either side of its head, and each bore a coat of dull-colored fur and a raiment of black-steel armor.
“Keep it moving, you lot!” Ragnar Bleedingblade, the leader of the Warband shouted to his charge. “If any of you pathetic mice collapse in the snow, there will be no rescue!”
Ragnar's voice, much like other male Charr, was rough and grating. He grumbled under his breath as he cursed silently to himself. His Warband was weak from continuing assaults by the frozen undead of the Shiverpeak mountains, and losing one of their Warband members to the previous assault did not help improve morale.
Finally, at the back of the line, it happened. An older Charr, with a gray, venerable muzzle collapsed. The cruel weather of the Shiverpeaks coupled with the festering blade wounds he'd received from the Shiverpeaks undead had finally overcome the old warrior's will. The elderly Charr attempted to rise once, twice, three times, but each time his strength failed him and sent him back into the deep snow.
Ragnar growled and approached his fallen ally. “Rise, you pathetic sack of bones!” No response. Hidden beneath his Charr bravado, Ragnar felt sympathy for his ally. He was called Augur Jaggedspear, and he had been the Legionnaire previous to Ragnar, before his age made him apt to retire. Ragnar secretly viewed him as a father figure, though he'd never admit it.
“I said, rise!” The Charr legionnaire delivered a solid kick to his fallen friend's midsection. Augur groaned and mustered up the strength to raise his head and look Ragnar in the eyes.
“Grant me a warrior's death, Legionnaire... Relieve the Warband of this burden.”
Ragnar flashed a grim, fanged grin. Despite his belief in his abilities to hide his emotions, the grin did little to mask his sorrow. “A warrior's death? You deserve to die like a rat, if you'll let the winter take you before the blade of the enemy.” Augur's head fell to the ground. Promptly, Ragnar delivered a savage stomp to the retired Legionnaire's ribs, audibly knocking the wind out of him.
Ragnar hocked a good amount of phlegm and spat it upon his fallen comrade. “Die like a rat, Augur, you coward!”
Immediately, roaring fiercely, the elder Charr rose. Taking even Ragnar by surprise, he clutched the Legionnaire's throat with an iron grip, raising him from the ground. Immediately after lifting his superior, however, a sharp pain invaded the elder's midsection and he fell to his knees. In-between heavy breaths, the Charr elder spoke once more. “Too soft to kill off a dying comrade, eh, Bleedingblade?”
Ragnar drew his flintlock pistol and cocked it, pointing it at Augur's gray forehead. “No,” he growled, fiercely, as he pulled the trigger, emptying his old friend's skull onto the frigid snow. “I just wanted you to die on your feet.”
Turning away from the corpse of the fallen warrior, the frigid winds mussing his furry mane in the direction of his flowing cloak, Ragnar rallied his Warband with a sudden, gruff shout. “Come on, you lot! Single file. We've got a long way to go yet.”
Chapter 1: The Prodigal Human
The Asuran capital of Rata Sum is known for three things: the intuitive nature of its citizens, the ambitious nature of its citizens, and the competitive nature of its citizens. The city's architecture is a tribute to all three aspects of the diminutive Asuran people. Giant magical cubes suspended in the air by Asuran magitechnology compensate for the extremely small size of the people who designed them.
An average Asuran male stands at about four feet tall, is covered in gray, blotchy skin, and whose faces are dominated by two wide eyes glowing with genius, and a row of razor sharp teeth set in a large mouth seemingly set on hinges.
The city was founded 250 years ago by the first Asuran refugees to escape their dark tunnels under the earth as they began to collapse due to the power of the ancient dragon Primordius' chief agent: The Great Destroyer. The Great Destroyer and his armies of beetle-like creatures filled with lava would have taken the rest of the continent, too, if it weren't for the ingenuity and cunning of the mighty Asuran people... At least, that's what they'd all be keen on telling you were you to ask.
A sharp, high-pitched voice broke the silence of the labs of the Asuran college of Statics. “Vekk's breath! Where did that human get off to?” A small, diminutive creature waddled throughout his lab, in search of his most recent genius-in-training... The first human to ever be allowed into any Asuran college, no less. “Velandra, show yourself!”
A beautiful woman, well, beautiful by human standards, anyway, sat studying the magic that got her into the Asuran college. She had beautiful golden hair that would have reached down below her shoulders were it not tied up to prevent it getting in the way of her studies. Her lips were naturally red, and perfectly shaped. Her eyes were a shade of green lined with hazel that belied stories in her past of breaking the heart of many a man.
“Blasted Asura,” Velandra remarked as the Asuran genius continued calling her name, rousing her from her books and magical practice. She was a competent Elementalist by anyone's standards, even the Asura, but she always sought more knowledge. For that reason, she persuaded the Asuran 'school board,' as it were, to allow her one semester in the College of Statics of Rata Sum. The condition was that she must make one discovery deemed “influencificial” enough by Asuran standards to be considered “superrevolutionary”.
Finally locating his student, the Asuran professor, by the name of Nakk, screeched, “How dare you be late to class?”
“I'm not,” Velandra responded, “I've been here for hours. You are late to class, genuis Nakk.”
Not about to take that from his student, the gray-skinned, brown-haired Nakk grinned spitefully, displaying his razor-sharp teeth. “Ah, so you won't mind if I see what you've been working on?”
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