"Queens and commoners, princes and peasants, welcome to the party of the quincentury!"
For most people, receiving an invitation to the White King's Masquerade is an honor. Even attempting to attend is a chance to go down in history. But for Sol of M...
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Kostik led us to the Alcane tower, a glass wonder of deep prussian blue and rich sapphire, our weapons of choice in hand.
Already waiting was Asriel, with a tall, curvy woman, attired with the armour of old. Her flaming red her streamed behind her as if ruffled by its own permanent wind. She was a valkyrie, I realized as I took in the wings emblazoned on the front of her breastplate.
"Glad to see you could join us," Asriel said, seriously.
The woman stared down at us, making me feel even smaller than I already did.
"I am Adrei, and today I will be preparing you to face the A'ila Mortis, what you know as the 'Black Isle' but literally the 'Isle of Death'. Her silver eyes blazed ferociously as she said the words and I crumbled a bit under her gaze.
She turned slightly to Asriel and he lifted his hand, causing a dense mist to descend on us.
"The danger of the Black Isle is not the terrain or the water, but the Triumvirate Draconi," she explained, her accented words piercing through the haze as the fog contorted to form images of three otherworldly dragons.
"Khyrimin, the Flamebender," she said, as a twisting mass of flame and scales flew before our eyes.
"Ptherix, the Bloodmonger." Right on cue, a slender blood red dragon, with shiny, gold eyes, and bloodstained claws swirled before us.
"And Syvis, the Spiritdragon." The last was probably the most terrifying. Metres of scaly white skin, embellished by splashes of ruby red swirled by. Syvis's eyes were the bloodthirsty red of war, and it's white teeth gleamed.
"These dragons are likely as old as time itself. Even if you could kill one," she said, raising her chin, "the universe would demand a heavy price to restore the balance. So do not try to be a hero. It is called the Isle of Death for a reason. Fight if you must but, most importantly, run."
I felt a sudden chill as she said the words, staring at the three ancestral dragons spiraling before us.
And just as quickly as the chill had arrived it was gone, along with the fog.
Asriel and Adrei led us into Alcane tower and immediately down a small staircase, into what I presumed would be a basement of sorts.
I was very wrong.
We steeped out of the staircase onto a cliff of earthy brown rock, and beyond us, an ocean away, stood the Black Isle.
It was a stretch of hostile grey rock, black in some places and speckled with white, with a large, imposing cliff just a few meters away from the shore. The clouds above it were dark and thunderous, with streaks of lightening visible even from this distance.
We followed Adrei to the side of the cliff on which we stood, where it was gentle enough for us to walk down to the water. There, waiting for us on the brown sand, was a small toy schooner.
