Chapter One: Arrival

**WARNING -- GRAPHIC SCENES. I do not encourage or condone the behaviour depicted below.**

The sun's unrelenting, devouring gaze swept across everything it could touch like little fiery fingers. The singular boat on the water wasn't spared its prodding as it made its way across the Emerald Bay. From its bow, a soldier in heavy dark-plated armor wiped his brow and kept his eyes ahead — ever vigilant for threats to their cargo. It wasn't duty that pushed him to act like a good soldier, his armor stank more of fear than of sweat. His hypervigilant stare sweeping across the skyline.

The fortress ahead was beautiful, and a place not to take lightly. Its blueish stones glimmered with a strange light, the sand at its base flickered in spirals, vines crept up its side and a garish emblem was plastered at its front like an abscess that wouldn't heal. A blood red triangle with fine golden filigree wires trapping a blue bird. The birdcage.

Despite it's eerie beauty, the soldier's eyes didn't remain transfixed so low. His eyes kept flickering above, like a child trying not to watch the scary scene in a play. At the crown. At the nest of two majestic and terrifyingly rare creatures. Dragons. Other than above this fortress and sometimes in the Emerald Isles, many have never even seen a dragon. It was said that this island used to belong to a sorceress a millennia ago when legends still roamed the earth and miracles could be made real.

It was here that she lived in harmony with these fiercely loyal and sharply intelligent creatures. While her name has been lost to history, the dragons still remain.

Like their sharp teeth, the fortress was surrounded on all sides by jagged mountains of shiny black stone that seemed to almost sprout from the water. The only port connecting the fortress to civilization was found on the South East docks of LakeTown, a bustling economic hub in Salva.

At its shore, standing silently among the dancing swirls of sand, is an old but elegant looking woman. One gnarled hand clutched to a dark wooden cane and the other, eventually reached up to beckon the soldiers closer as the boat continued to approach the dock.

Her accent hung thick in the air as she shouted, "Time for the pleasure gardens while you're here soldiers?" She leaned over to itch her palm.

"Ya be giving me a discount on account of my large prick then?" A man coarsely shot back from the aft, using a large dark rope to temporarily secure the vessel. She took it in stride, "Big or thick it's still just a prick". Something she said often enough as madame of the Aviary. A reflex almost. Everyone would always pay their dues.

The soldier only shrugged in response as he tied off one last knot. Three swift steps below deck and he emerged with a bloody mess of blond curls. The body in his arms lay very, very still. He lugged it ashore before roughly dropping it in the sand, not caring that it was scalding to the touch at this time of day. The madame's eyes narrowed appraisingly, as if trying to calculate who would be interested in tasting something so obviously broken. Men and women of many tastes passed through her doors but she had a knack for figuring out what each of them needed.

She was startled out of her revelry when the soldier barked out, "He wants 'er separate from yer other garls. No pleasure gardens, no callers." "I'm no wet-nurse for his damaged prey," she hissed back at the soldier with a grimace, but he ignored her.