The Call of the Elements: A Kiss of Fire

I shall begin with that which is passionate and beautiful, as an old man is wont to do. Fire, who consumes and destroys even as she gives light and warmth, loveliest of the Elements. Once, she locked herself away, hidden in a land of snow and ice, fearing the power that burned within her. 's the folly: we brought her back.I've heard people say that the Forbidden City and the Elements are myths. My own grandchildren laugh at the stories my father told me, of an age when men lived in cities a thousand times the size of Eastpoint-by-the-blight or Silverfall, when they sailed the sky in ships made of metal and were masters of all they saw. Even my son considers the tales of Fire and the Second Sun or Wind and the City that Fell from the Sky to be nothing more than bedside stories or the ramblings of a senile old man. I fear that we have lost all we once were, as the Pact of the Elements fades from the memory of man, vanishing into the mists of the past. When I was but a boy, my great grandfather, lying on his deathbed, sat me down and looked hard into my eyes. He was a ferocious man who would never tell a lie, and he said to me, "Ezekiel, you listen well. Your father never held with the stories, and so now I'm telling you. Every one of them is true, sure as the sun and moon and ground beneath your feet. You mind your letters, and you keep those stories alive, or so help me I will come back and take it from your hide." I nodded solemnly; he has never yet proven himself to be a liar. So here I am, Ezekiel Masukawa, last of the true Scribes, in this two hundredth year since the Return of the Elements and the Fall of Man. I commit these truths to paper and ink, that they might be remembered and heeded in the days to come. We must never forget that we are not alone, that the Forbidden City still sits within a ring of stone and fire, shrouded in mist and guarded by air and lightning. They live in opposition to the natural order of things, waiting to reclaim the world they have lost. But I am getting ahead of myself...