Prologue
Once, in the kingdom of Minvera, there were two great dragons, the great golden dragon, Mythros and his beautiful silver mate, Cybele. Mythros and Cybele were the first dragons. They made their home on a great mountain that has been the great gathering place of the dragons for centuries. One day, Mythros and Cybele decided to create a special egg (using magic), that was different from the other dragons they had created. They hid the egg to protect it so that if anything happened to them before it hatched, it would remain safe until it hatched. Now all this happened long before the first humans were brought onto the Earth, when the dragons and magical beasts reigned.
Soon the dragons began to tire of looking after the world, the magical beasts were turning to wild ways and not living peacefully with each other, so the dragons started working on a project to create a guardian being to look after the world for them. They tried many times, each time not producing the perfect being, so they ate many of their failed attempts. Some beings they created were set free to roam. Finally, after working on the project, they created a perfect guardian. They created many more guardians after this.
As their numbers grew, the people became greedy, stubborn and narrow-minded. They fought among themselves, killed and stole from each other. Mythros and Cybele saw how the people were acting and decided it was no longer their job to look after them. The dragons turned their backs on the people and when the people saw that they were free from the dragons rule, they became a ruthless, bloodthirsty, lawless civilisation. They started hunting the dragons and killing them. They killed so many that Mythros decided the dragons must go into hiding to protect their kind from the evil that the people had brought to the kingdom. As the people grew more hungry for power, they set up kings to rule them and grew careless in their ways.
One day, a knight decided to carry on the hunt for the dragons. He climbed the mountain, where no other knight had gone, while Mythros was out and there found Cybele, asleep and unprotected, so he killed her. When Mythros returned home he found the slain body of his beloved mate. He lay by her side for days, refusing food and water. Then one day, some of the other dragons came to bury their queen, he took her heart out and began working to turn the heart into a stone. The result was a magical red stone that glowed from inside it. The stone was put under enchantments to hide it from sight so that it was protected.
Mythros suffered the same unfortunate fate as his beloved mate. Years after she died, people began looking for the mythical dragons' treasure and they climbed the mountain. The people made so much noise that it woke Mythros. He saw them coming, but it was too late. They slaughtered him as he tried to protect his cave. The dragons buried their dead king with his mate and made attempts to find and hatch the egg, but it remained concealed from them.
As the years turned into centuries, the dragons all but moved on from their two quests, to find the egg and to elect a new ruler. The dragons found nobody worthy to rule, so they waited.
One day, up on the mountain, the spells hiding the stone started to collapse. The spells also held up the roof of the cave, so on the day they fully crumbled, the roof caved in and buried the stone from sight. The dragons saw what happened and went to the now crumbled cave. There, lying untouched, among the rubble, lay the stone. They found the stone and moved it to their new lair, one hundred miles to the south of the city, in what is now occupied land. The dragons had a fortress there and that is where they hid the stone until the fortress was deserted.
When the dragons abandoned the fortress, they forgot to remove the stone remained hidden, until it's collapse some time later. Years later, King Charon came to power. Under his rule, the city expanded to the south and became a massive trading port. King Charon discovered the remains of the dragon fortress and ordered that it be the site for his new palace to be built on. As the site was being cleared, one of the workers came across the stone and gave it to the king. The king wanted the stone to be made into jewellery, but much to his displeasure, he found that he was unable to make a single chip in the surface of the magic stone. The king decided that if he could not use the stone for jewellery, then it must be put into the treasury.
The stone was put into the treasury, left there and forgotten about until the assassination of the king. The new king, a bad man called King Mirsrah took the throne and demanded that the jewel be put on public display. King Mirsrah reigned for a few years before the kingdom elected a new king and had King Mirsrah executed. The new king, King Oalm, neglected to remove the jewel from public display and as a result, several murders of royal blood and state ministers occurred in an attempt to snatch the jewel. The king saw that the jewel had a bad influence on the kingdom and he would lose his throne if he didn't remove the stone. The king thought it best to have the jewel locked up in a far away place and guarded by the most skilled warriors in the kingdom. He established the Keepers, a group of the most elite warriors in the kingdom and set up their base, high up in a practically inaccessible valley in the mountains. He set up headquarters and a training school in the city which served as communication means between the capital and the Keepers. The jewel was then handed over to the Keepers and guarded.
For centuries, the stone remained unharmed. The Keepers' valley, which previously had only housing for those on guard, had now expanded to a small settlement that traded with the kingdom, which had expanded to an empire. Then, when the empire was under the reign of Queen Kayla, the first woman to lead the empire, the stone mysteriously disappeared. When she heard the news, she was greatly saddened. This is the history of The Fire Stone.
