STORYTELLER

I

There was once a boy who plucked the stem of a blood-coloured flower along a trek through the scorching desert. He caressed its fine petals, and a glow of power surrounded him.

Immediately, the King's three most powerful mages felt the presence of this new, foreign power, and brought the boy before them. They found that he could control all matter, and he was inducted straight into the league of supreme mages. Once known to the lands as the Terrific Three, they were now the Fearsome Four, and the king had a quest for them at once.

The land was dying, and they were to retrieve a teardrop of the demon witch Serena, which held the power to bring life and lush greens back to the dying land.

Their quest would not be easy — for all who had faced Serena, who lived atop the treacherous Mt. Doom, had not lived to tell the tale. All the mages knew was that they needed three items to complete the quest: something shiny with the glare of a sun, something to entrap, and something to soothe a fragile heart.

Before they embarked on their perilous journey, the three mages introduced themselves proper to the prodigious boy.

"I am Tasha Temptress," the first mage says, her hair jet black, tipped at the end with mini lightning bolts, "and I control the weather and the skies."

"I am Salamander the Sage," the second mage says, a wizened scholar with a book of master spells always in arm. "I conjure things from my mind and thoughts."

"And I am Meowster Meeks," the final mage says, resembling first a disdainful cat, then transforming into a gentle, old spider. "I have the power to shift to any shape or form."

Surely, with their combined powers, the four would succeed? Our heroes headed off first towards the Fern Forest, where it was said someone held the first item of their grand quest.