Letter Fifty-Nine

My Dearest Nephew,

I write to you now in hopes of enlightening you further on the events of late. Though I know that you have heard from both your uncles Scaligar and Trubodox on the matter of the coming conflict, the Compass War they are calling it as a reference to the Dragons of the four cardinal points of the compass who shall clash in it, now that more details have revealed themselves on this matter, I feel it my duty to shed a little more light on it all.

            Firstly, your uncle Trubodox is quite right in his observations on the actions of the Magicians in the North. They have been stirring of late and their restlessness causes great worry among us Dragons and rightly so. The last time the Wyvern Magicians and us Dragons of the four Points clashed, the conflict was terrible, coming close to obliterating the humans of our world. The Draconic population too paid a heavy toll in lives during the last years of that bloody war. And yet the lives were not spent without a purpose. The Magicians were pushed back once more into their caves were they slumbered for ages since. And now they are stirring once more.

            On another subject concerning the Wyvern Magicians your uncle Trubodox was also correct. The power of the Elemental Pearls wielded by a few of us Eastern Dragons has been bested by the Dark might of the Magicians and may be again in the coming war. We are not as powerful as many think we are. The powers of the Pearls are meant to be used for the good of all. In conflict and oppression of both humans and Dragons, their abilities will slowly wane. It took years for those of us in the East who battled the Magicians to build up again the power lost by our Elemental Pearls in the struggle. This is another reason why we Easterners do not attack the Western shores and lay waste to the homes of the Western oppressors. We would slowly become like them and the power of the Pearls would weaken, flicker and die. I did not tell you this when I first explained the reasons of the Easterners in response to your uncle Scaligar’s wonderments because I did not feel that the matter at claw at that time was important enough to reveal this secret, but now it is.

            Soon I must make an end to this letter and depart for a counsel with the other veterans of the last war with the Magicians. We are to decide the appointing of generals for the war and the placement of certain Draconic forces in our lands. However, before I leave for the counsel, I must ask you which army of Dragons you shall favor in the war. All four of the Dragon coasts now turn against each other, blaming each other for the waking of the stunted Wyverns. It is as it was before. We shall all battle each other once more and the death toll will be terrible. Therefore I beseech you to fight on the side of the East. I would hate to meet you in battle some day in the coming war, Nephew, hate to have to fight you claw to claw even. Fight with the East, I implore you.

            Your humble servant, Mentor and uncle,

       Semithino

Letter Fifty-Eight

Dear Smok,

I find it strange my nephew, passing strange to finally write to you in my proper mind set, strange but not entirely uncomfortable. I am exceedingly relieved to finally be able to put quill to parchment in my real mind, and not in that frankly unnatural second psych masquerading as myself.

         I find that still quite mind boggling that such a dragon as myself would have such an unstable and unhygienic counterpart within the bowels of my mind. I am very hopeful that this alternate personality will remain dormant for as long as possible, at leas length enough to properly explain my predicament to some of the dragons I have done unto in my prior years of instability.

         I have found it key to my recovery to take a rather long holiday in some of the more quiet provinces of Draconia, perhaps Frostuay, or maybe Deldosno, I hear their melons are in season. But hopefully my priorities will not stray far enough so that I am compelled to travel to Frizid, my correspondent Natar the Frostbitten has made it quite clear that a dragon’s fore claw would fall off in a gentle breeze emanating from that forsaken province, which is very possible to believe indeed due to the title of Frizid.

         Though I sense that a holiday may not be the best idea in this time of unrest, especially an obviously western supporter like me. Dark whispers have been coming abroad, hushed rumors of stirrings of the dark magicians in the forgotten places of the North. This is most troubling, in my experience with those terrible beings they are best left alone in their dark mountain caves. But if they are at last waking once more, it shall mean great ill for the Draconian world, even the Eastern dragons go down in myth as barely able to stand against any one of the Shadow Magicians and their dark Familiars.

         Perhaps you have not yet heard of the Dark Magicians in your studies. I am not very shocked at this, the myths and legends of the forgotten powers have been intentionally blotted out by superstitious historians. But, to put a very long story short, the dark magicians came into power. They were a dark breed of stunted Wyverns who dwelled in the deep caves of the mountains of Darr. They delved deep into witchcraft down in those cursed caves, drawing knowledge from tomes of witchcraft, and with that knowledge, power came.

         They drew to them a great army of creatures clad in darkness, even some dragons came to share in their power. They struck at the world of Draconia with devastating results, almost immediately taking the northern provinces with a mixture of dark magic and sheer force.

         But before they could get any farther, one of the most well known dragons put a stop to their rain of evil. You will have known him as Belligast the Boldest, but back then they called him Belligast the Lightclad on account of his triumph.

         He destroyed the armies of the magicians and drove them back single-clawed back into the darkness of the mountains. He was remembered forever onward as Belligast the Lightclad, though through time and ages long past he was dubbed Belligast the Boldest, perhaps on account of several dragon lawyers arguing about copy-writes, though I do not understand such things.

         At the moment I am on my way to the Northern Provinces with a convoy of both Eastern and Western dragons in search of the truth about these rumors. Even if the rumors of the magicians are just that, rumors, the North is troubled, rebels are attacking left and right, public unrest has twisted loyalties, and mob scenes are now daily.

         There is a war coming nephew, and I may have no choice but to pick sides. I nurse a certain loyalty to the North, as I was in fact born there and then taken to the Western provinces on account of a bout of disease.

         I have even been selected as a possible candidate for the general of the armies of the North, though only you know this, I have chosen to keep it covert for the moment, because I have a feeling that my companions in the convoy may not take it well.

         You will certainly have to choose sides in his coming Compass War, and I have great hopes you shall join me in the North as a supporter of the cause. Though no doubt your other uncles have tried to sway you I am hopeful that you may break away from Scaligar’s conniving and Semithino’s talk of the greater good and join me.

         Your anxious uncle,

Trubodox the Scarlet

Letter Fifty-Seven

Smok,

         It has come to my attention that my brother Gargazath has been restored to his former self, Trubodox, “The Scarlet” as they nicknamed him in our junior high days. I was very shocked and surprised, as you might imagine, to hear that my brother had found his sanity once more, and I fainted dead away when he gave me a personal visit and announced his restoration. It seems his former psyche has come back, and Gargazath has been destroyed once and for all.

         I am currently in the hospital. I shall be released tomorrow, but in any case I decided to write of most urgent matters.

         There are rumors, Smok, grave rumors. Surely you must know of the tension between dragons of different regions, and so I must explain that there are whispers of a war that is about to start, that will completely change the world. Northern, western, eastern, and even those loons from the south are gearing up for battle. It will be a great dragon war of epic proportions, the like of which the world has never seen before, and the winning side will dictate the fate of draconian and human civilization hereafter.

         The Compass War may be about to begin. I urge you, Smok, to use reason in choosing your side, if this does come about. I will most likely be general of the western forces, considering that my reputation and wits are of highest repute. I know I may have seemed like a pompous fool, boasting of my intellect, but some (if indeed not all) of my ranting has a grain of truth in it. I am renowned for my skill in strategy and my prowess in battle, and although the days of the greats are at an end, I am the next-best thing that the west can muster.

         The northerners are savage, but the western dragons are by far the most numerous of all dragons; our region is brimming with dragons and we can overwhelm the north easily, although I do not know. Trubodox seems to be leaning toward the northern side, or so I am informed, and although his military strategy and cunning may be lacking, his strength and brutal simplicity in his schemes may make him a worthy opponent, should the north choose him as their leader. But anyhow, I do not think I shall need to worry too much about that front.

         The south is a bunch of hippies, drunks, and loons, and their army will fall apart as soon as it gets to the battlefield, if not before. We westerners need not worry about them.

         It is the power in the east that I am worried about. Their cursed elemental pearls could prove a handful, should they find it morally acceptable to use them. Semithino certainly found it morally acceptable to use his against me, the cowardly cur! My stratagem in defeating them shall most likely be subterfuge, guerrilla warfare, and all that; but it will be dangerous, very dangerous.

         I do hope you side with me, if the war should come about. I hope your recent affiliations and correspondence with Semithino haven’t addled you too much, but I fear you are past saving now. If you side with the east and we meet upon the battlefield, I will not hesitate to kill you. I wish it could be otherwise, but alas. Your path is chosen, I fear; you will probably follow the eastern way of life.

         My way of living isn’t so bad, Smok; I wouldn’t have you slaughter very many humans. As I have reiterified time and again before now, the key to being known as a great isn’t so much to slaughter all in your path, but to appear more ferocious than you are while at the same time possessing a backbone. Your name would go down in history if you followed this principle, and it’s not too much work. It’s the show business, so to speak.

         -Your serpentine uncle,

                  Scaligar

P.S. The service in this hospital is awful.

Letter Fifty-Six

My Dearest Nephew,

First off, allow me to apologize for the slight lie I told you in my latest letter. I told you that all I would only alert the dragons escorting your uncle Gargazath to Hurdek’s home to the danger they would be I along their journey. While I did indeed do this, I also followed the escort at a distance and watch on to see what might come to pass.

            I apologize once more for keeping you in the dark on this subject, but I feared that you might let something slip in a letter to your uncle Scaligar and he would ruin all as he is won’t to do. I watched the escort for most of their journey and nothing seemed to be going wrong. However, I was saddened to see how deeply your uncle Gargazath has sunken into his madness.

            When the group of dragons was in sight of the coast of Hurdek’s home however, your uncle Scaligar suddenly appeared from the West laden with packages filled with I knew not what. He waylaid the escort and attacked his brother with Dragonfire and the packages of what turned out to be the black explosive powder made in the West of my coastal home.

            I watched all of this from a distance so as not to be observed and could not reach the place of the attack in time to save Gargazath. By the time I arrived in the place from whence he had fallen into the seas, he had already sunk too far below the waves for me to retrieve him.

            Your uncle Scaligar had already fled and the dragons who had been escorting Gargazath on his journey pursued him across the skies to the West.

            As I watched your uncle Gargazath sink through the water, I thought to myself that it might be the most merciful fate for him in his present state. I quick death would be better than a life of incessant, unending madness.

            I began my journey home then but I had not gotten far when I heard the sea boiling beneath me. I turned and watched as Trubodox the Scarlet rose from the seas in all his former glory.

            I gather from what you have told me of your uncle Trubodox’s latest letter to you that he has by some miracle been cured of his madness by just the right combination of Dragonfire and explosive powder. My feelings of late on this subject are befuddled in a word. I knew Trubodox as  brother-in-law for hardly a measurable time at all. As your uncle Scaligar has said, the happy marriage of his brother Rorfang to your mother pushed Trubodox over the brink of his growing insanity which had been fed by his failure during the Dragonhunt. Thus, it was not long after I met your uncle Trubodox that he was consumed by Terminal Bligardazash and became his alternate, violent and butterfly-consumed personality, Gargazath.

            As I hardly knew him before this point in his life, I merely thought that it was how he had always been. The madness of Trubodox must have been painful for your uncle Scaligar. Watching on as his once great brother sank into utter madness must have been like watching someone bake a succulent chocolate cake and then icing it with Zucchini sauce.

            On another subject that I thought might be important for you to know, I have observed restless stirrings in the East around the area of my Province. Reliable friends in surrounding areas report that they too have noticed the agitation of Dragons of late. To the North also the Storm and Ice Dragons are stirring.

            The Dragons of the four points are stirring, a shadow descends over us all. Unrest rises against the other Dragons of our world. I have seen such times once before when the Dragons of the compass points grew tired of the Drakes and waged war on their kind, finally battling them on the plains to the South and confining them to the Isle of Bootjaw.

            Prepare yourself for a storm, nephew, for one is coming.

            Your humble servant, mentor and uncle,

            Semithino