Ryuen

Approximately one hundred fifty years prior to the events in part 1:

Veshron hated this part of his job. Sooner or later a few of the humans always discovered what they were doing, and therefore had to be eliminated. There were more things that could go wrong than he liked to take a chance on, but there was no real alternative.

Rynnion and Sarvra, the other two members of his team, felt much the same way. They'd never know it, however, because the dislike between them and their "leader" ran both ways. On mission they would work together, but not because they liked to do so.

The dragons had taken to meddling in human affairs, walking amongst them in human guise. Occasionally a few of the humans were bright enough to discover what was going on. When that happened, drastic measures had to be taken.

Veshron motioned and Sarvra approached the house. One dragon would be enough to destroy its occupants. Rynnion and Veshron needed only to ensure there would not be any witnesses. It was to be a surgical strike. No more complications could arise.

Sarvra stopped at the front door and knocked, waited a few seconds, then rang the door bell. She appreciated the irony of the humans literally opening the door for their assassin, even though no one else ever would. Certainly the members of this house wouldn't, at any rate.

The young man who answered the door was dead before light was visible through the opening. As soon as the locks rolled back and clicked into place, her claws had split the flimsy board the door was made of and pierced his throat. Half a second later she kicked the door, slamming it open and crushing the body against the wall, clearing him from her path before he could even hit the floor.

She paused a moment to examine her surroundings. The man was both younger and taller than she had expected him to be; the marks from her talons tore lower on his neck than she had intended. The door opened into the corner of a simple square living room. To her right an old bookshelf leaned against the center of the wall, and to her left, the rest of the room opened out. There stood the woman, Sarvra's second target, frozen in place.

Sarvra took her time as she turned to and approached the woman. Her eyes were opened, but they were half closed and staring at nothing. "Curious," Sarvra thought. "I wonder if she knows what's coming next." More likely the woman was in shock, having witnessed the first part of the strike.

The dragon was not above toying with her prey. Casually she approached the woman, waving her bloodied right hand over her eyes in an attempt to prompt a reaction. Up close Sarvra could see the woman's lips quivering. Was she trying to speak, to plead for mercy, or was she giving a last-breath prayer? Sarvra almost regretted the fact that she would never have a chance to find out.

Seemingly out of nowhere lines of raw energy and power formed between them. Sarvra instinctively recognized what was about to happen, but the other's strike was so sudden that she had no time to react.

A beam of pure and focused magic struck the dragon's chest, piercing her lung and shattering ribs before exiting her back. The force of the blast threw her against the wall behind her, crushing the bookshelf and collapsing it overtop her as she fell to the floor, covered in the resulting rubble.

Sarvra knew she was finished as she looked up at her attacker, pinned beneath the debris the impact had left atop her. The woman's eyes had cleared following the strike, focusing into a look of such power and anger as Sarvra had ever seen.

The weight of the dragon's own body would have been enough to kill her then, as the woman began manipulating Sarvra's environment, bringing gravity itself upon her, crushing her lungs even as one filled with her own blood. In desperation the dragon struck at the field around the other mage, which had become a tangle of lines and shields of unimaginable complexity. Finally, as the last of her consciousness was squeezed from her, Sarvra loosed all the magical energy that was still left to her, found a hole in her enemy's powerful but rage-induced defenses, and threw everything she had through the gap. Her own assault took hold of the women, and with darkness enveloping the edges of her vision, Sarvra's magic took hold of the woman, and shattered her neck.