All had come to ruin. Centuries of war had ground down a once mighty empire until only the holy city upon the rock of ages remained. Now the enemy was at the gates, and it was time for the faithful to give the last full measure of their devotion. The High Priestess was girt in her finest treasures, artifacts from deepest antiquity wrought with dragon’s fire and imbued with the spirit of the ancient Wyrms.

Never before had the golden claw been worn but the time was now and as the Priestess slipped the claw on she felt her fingers mold themselves into new, more primitive shapes within the golden shell. She whispered an invocation and remembered what she had been told of the powers the eldritch gauntlet held.

"In the most desperate need, offer thy hand and I shall come forth to serve the servants."

Hers was an ancient legacy: the gift of fire had been handed down to her people from the elder drakes and with it the dragon-kin had built a great nation in reverence of their god-like patrons. Now that legacy was threatened with annihilation and hers was to be a quest of salvation or at the last, vengeance. She felt the weight of the drake as he came forth. One moment she was alone in the dark of a moonless night and the next the space around her was filled with the vast presence of another. He had answered her plea, and as she gazed out beyond the temple heights to where her city burned the power surging through her veins offered a dire promise to those who attacked the holy city of the dragonkin.



Story by Cebelius