Sons of Ironstorm - Book 1: Griffon's Rise

Chapter 1 - The Event

                                   “And they were Dark Men, Beings of Evil,

                                    Possessed of great powers that shook the earth.

                                    Against them the Hosts of the Sa’an were arrayed,

                                    Against them the Armies of the Elves did battle,

                                    And great was the Fall thereof!”

                                                - from Cephanon’s ‘Ruminations’, ch. 4

With an explosion of light and life, Spring had come to Reutha, sweeping away winter’s last chill and frosty fingers of ice and snow.  Sweeping them aside to let the green of renewal once again carpet the forests, plains and mountains of Ramnor’s greatest continent.  Behind the green of Spring’s first breath came the renewed vigor of its full strength, a wild array of color and scent, given wing by dancing spring zephyrs and hue by shimmering strokes of flowering plants.  With a broad brush Iathomer, the Spirit of Spring did paint the wilderness and the forests green in the shades of the rainbow, Ri’im’s brilliant kiss caught in rainy embrace, as she merrily danced through glade and glen, joyful in the return of warmth and winter’s reluctant retreat.

Given power to rise earlier and earlier with each passing day by Iathomer’s return, Ri’im himself burst into view this morning, casting his robe of gold over the face of the world, brushing away shadow and rousing color and life to a new day’s beginning.  And the light of his coming revealed the land, dewy and sleepy, but joyful at day’s dawning in signal of another daily season of growth and renewal.

Far to the north, in a land of brooding hills of weathered stone and ancient forests of evergreen, a pinnacle of stone was illuminated by Ri’im’s early embrace.  While tall and majestic as it reached for the sky, the forces of nature didn’t shape this pinnacle; rough and ready weather, smooth and steady erosion.  No, this turret, this tower of gray granite had been fashioned by skilled and dedicated hands, a great work of craft that rivaled the natural towers of distant Akana Zuthdar, the Mountains of the Giant’s Teeth in its height and strength.

Beneath the watchful eye of this great and mighty tower sprouted other turrets and places of craft, fashioned from the living stone into dwellings and resorts of strength.  For the tower was the heart of a mighty fortress, ancient and powerful, her thick and puissant walls never breached in all the long cycles it had stood here, in the tumbled stone wilderness that was the Sylvar pon Lithos; The Forest of Stone.

In the fortress's northern reach, nearly in the shadow of the great tower of granite, there stood a lesser tower, one that climbed only half as high as the tower in the fortress’s heart.  But, in denial of its seeming lack of importance, here, in this tower, in a small study set into its highest room, the greatest event to unfold in all the history of Ramnor was about to happen.

With his small study almost bursting at the seams from the multitude of books, scrolls and other paraphernalia that filled it wall to wall, the Sa’anish Seer Cephanon hummed lightly under his breath as he moved away from his small telescope.  It was set up to look out the study’s only window and directly into the northern sky.  Clutched in one slender hand was a daytime star chart, a listing of the stars that could be seen at dawn and dusk, along with diagrams showing their locations in the sky in all four seasons.