Quest for the Lyre of Orphaeo

[Philomel]

As large as a terrifying Salvarian white bear and as vicious as a dragon, the twisted, beastial form of Philomel the dire-goat steadily gained to its hooves. Black to the skin, yet speckled in white and brown, she stood at seven foot to the shouder, mighty enormous horns spiralling seemingly into a void. With vivid eyes of silver that seemed themselves to glow, her mind was not of any reasoning creature.

The cry rang through her tapered ears.

"Lyre bearer," it screeched, "finish this evil one!"

Evil? Who, what? The goat let out a horrific bleat, the echoes filling the chamber. No-One the Sorceress turned her head away from her dust-creatures returning to the source what they had been. Her dark eyes slowly blinked, hands before her forming an invisible sphere between them. By her legs Veridian still was breathing, but barely. He had returned to his birth-firm, all the flames and muscles had gone. Mighty as he had been, now he was little more than a struggling pest. Eyes wide and golden he watched the witch's gaze settle onto the goat, Breaker just managing to gain his ground.

Only just.

And now between the hands, in the exact centre of that sphere, a tiny nodule of illumination was beginning to be created. A pinprick of the smallest star, an atom of light that was a single point but could easily swell into something more. The swirling storm of the settling dust was merely a sign of what the witch might do more. Even as she was beginning to smirk, eyes dancing with delight at the sight of the massive goat that was beginning to growl in a bleating manner, the dust around her shook, as if the creatures that had been were threatening to return.

Just defeated. Now, coming back. The whirlwinds of sand and black coloured dirt picking up pace, shaking, flittering, fluttering ...

Philomel! Veridian shrieked, please!

And he gave a cry of pain. Lacerating to the ear, haunting, spectacular, thundering it through their connected mentality into the goat's conciousness.

A roar. And Philomel the beast felt the source of the horror in this place, the agony of her companion pointing her directly towards the woman standing there, the pusalting orb of light growing, growing, growing ...

She began to run, charging with vehemence. Within seconds she had picked up pace, horns down and eyes the colour of death. Full of the blessing of Drys, and the anger of a thousand years of hatred.

Ready to face the sorceress whose dust storms had hands once again.