“The Royal Dragon Hunters of Corsinthia, before they were disbanded due to the monetary issues that brought about the collapse of the holy war against Skrande, were a most impeccably elite task force of trappers charged with the duty of bringing down the fiery leviathans of the sky ere they could inflict ill upon a center of great populace. To most effectively carry out the goals laid before them by the Corsinthian Government, they often kept in their employ a sizable number of working ballista that they had hauled – through an abundance of horse power – everywhere they did set foot during their never ending hunt for the winged reptiles. Of the vast deal of knowledge and lore they held within their group on how best to deal with the giant fire breathers, there was one fact of which they held above all others: this is not something one should ever engender the notion of attempting with a group of less than eight.”

- Excerpt from the Encyclopedia Corsinthia

Chapter 17: “Sacrificingly Lordly Caliber”

That great and deeply crimson shade of red, which blazed with a bright fury, danced all about the streets and pathways of the vender filled city of Kyosem; it was such that Tallus Osmaard, the former student of the famous Corsinthian Sage, had no option other than to employ his arms in a gambit to shield his face from the heat as he stepped outside of his dwelling to see what all the commotion was about. There was so much smoke wafting freely through the fire clogged streets that the clean-shaven man could hardly see anything in front of him at all; that said, it was still – despite the abundance of fumes obfuscating his vision – a trifle matter to locate something amidst all this chaos such as a dragon. For starters, one merely needed to go in the opposite direction of those running by screaming to know that they were surely moving in a manner such that they were closing in upon the mighty creature which currently beleaguered this town.

After a short dash forward, wherein both his eyes and lungs stung greatly from the assault they received from the soot and flame filled air, Tallus found himself in a more open part of Kyosem city where he saw before him a most truly noteworthy sight. Just ahead of him - in the, by this point, mostly emptied market square – was the man whom had, only a few scant moments earlier, grasped him by his shirt at his dinner table in a most uncouth manner. That Jysalef was standing in the market square, with blade drawn, was not the part of all this that was most amazingly remarkable to the Scholar; but, rather, what must be stated is that the former soldier turned vagrant that stood before him – whom must surely know the futility of engaging in such an endeavor all on his own – was at the moment presently attempting to keep hold of the attention of a dragon while those still in the market square managed to evacuate the premises.

Off to the side - helping to make sure that the entirety of the remaining panicked townspeople in the flame filled market square actually did manage to move away from the dragon currently besieging the environs – were Terus and Latte. Though normally the young Terus would have been most incensed at his instructor for telling him to stay out of something - for the youth often felt that Master Soresh often downplayed his talents in a most unfair manner whenever push did come to shove – when in the case of dealing with a dragon, for a change the lad was actually not apt to so readily argue with his mentor on the matter of his readiness. In fact, the pink haired young lady - currently assisting in the directing of human-traffic at the apprentice swordsman’s side - would not have disagreed in the slightest with receiving an order to completely flee the current premises; however – for the moment being – she had arrived at the conclusion that she’d rather be at Terus’s side in the presence of the great lethal lizard, than she would in making a bolt through the streets positively dancing with fire all by her singularly lonesome self.

Despite the fact that standing there – gawking at the truly malevolent spectacle before him – was anything but a healthy course of action for the ungraduated sage to allow himself to dabble in, mister Osmaard could not help but to marvel - with great fascination – to himself silently upon all of what his vision before him presently beheld. When he had first sought to speak with Jysalef, it had been due to the fact that he surmised that surely the ex-soldier must be the Great Wandering Corsinthian Swordsman spoke of with urgency in the oracular vision that had been handed down to him straight from the divine; alas, upon actually gaining an audience with the man, his opinion of the person was deflated rapidly via a rage filled performance of deplorable non-questioning jingoism. However, the nauseating bigotry of the man currently attempting to bait the attention of a most fearsome looking dragon aside, he was definitely managing to at the moment live up to all of the whispered rumors that had originally planted inside Osmaard’s head that very idea this was precisely the hero that his vision had spoke of.

After all, for while you could hardly make a journey anywhere in this depression filled kingdom without constantly running into someone completely given into what Tallus saw as an utterly deplorable and misinformed hatred of the Skrandonese, he was presently willing to wager his very house itself that only standing defiantly before him right now was a warrior of such sacrificingly lordly caliber that he would single handedly seek to distract something so wholly formidable as a dragon without a single promised coin being placed upon the table.

It was then that Tallus noticed something else going on in the smoke filled square, where presently the dragon was in a most lethal game of cat-and-mouse with Jysalef Soresh, that was nearly almost as unlikely as the one it had distracted gaze him from. One of the women attempting to make her way out of the roaring blaze had just cast off from her a very heavy robe of a completely encovering nature after it had contracted the misfortune of proving a little too flammable; and while such a heavy robe was extremely mismatched clothing for these parts of Theria during this time of year, what truly gave rise to shock was what could clearly be beheld by one’s eyes once the robe was no longer resting where it had been only a few moments earlier. With the flaming clothing now shucked - streaming lengthily behind the sprinting female form - could be seen long locks of cyan hued hair, truly an immediately identifiable sign of the mark of the Dolskum root if ever there was one.

Unfortunately it was not only the attention of Tallus Osmaard that was demanded by the sudden visage of such unlikely blue hair, but it was also something that was given the full notice by the damnable dragon as well. Immediately losing all interest in the vagrant swordsman that tried in earnest to captivate his attention - without also becoming his lunch as well - the fiery serpent lurched forward in the woman’s direction, with its voracious maw - dripping with smoke and blood - thrown menacingly wide open. However - even more greatly to Tallus’s surprise than the fact that Jysalef had earlier been attempting to hold grasp of its attention so recklessly all on his own for the sake of those escaping - was the fact that as the blood gushed forth from the deafening clamp down of the mighty beast’s jaws, the one held captive by the dragon’s mouth was not the woman with hair the color of the sky. Despite the fact she was clearly one whom harkened from the enemy lands of Skrande, the warrior had not even once paused to hesitate at all before he rammed himself shoulder first into the frightened foreigner - thusly knocking her to safety - thus irrevocably sealing forever the doors of his own mortal fate.

However, Jysalef was resolutely determined to not go in the pits of the thereafter as an appetizer for some contemptible monster roaming the Corsinthian countryside at the cost of the people whom lived there, and so – despite the fact it must have taken extreme resolve to move at all while in such massive pain as he surely must have been – the vagrant warrior thrusted deeply the decisive end of his sword into right eye of the foul creature before it could reopen its maw so as to more properly swallow its now captured prey. With a scream of pain that was so shrill that glass throughout the city of Kyosem ruptured and burst at its invocation, the monstrosity reared back its head in reaction to the blade sharply once before it neck then promptly fell heavily back down to the ground never again to ever defile another establishment in the Kingdom of Corsinthia.

As Terus Kyreon could be heard screaming his head off in uncontrollable grief, the Scholar – in light of all that he had just witnessed – could find the ability to do naught but collapse, his eyes raging with tears that stung like needles, limply to the dirt floor of the still smoldering marketplace square. Truly, this man had been the one spoken of in his divinely handed down oracular vision upon the matter of preventing great calamity; but now, after he had allowed himself to become provoked to wrath with the man for being little more than a product of the culture he was born in, the last hope for all of Theria laid before him gushing crimson everywhere from within the maw of a now dead dragon.